25 & 26, COMPTON ROAD

HILMARTON

1385/0/10019 COMPTON ROAD 18-DEC-06 25 & 26

GV II A pair of Poynder Estate cottages dated 1875.

MATERIALS: The cottages are built in rock-faced stone with ashlar dressings, and with stone slate pitched and gabled roofs (they appear to have been re-roofed in the C20) and a central ashlar ridge stack.

PLAN: The cottages, each of a T-plan, are joined back to back.

EXTERIOR: The two storey cottages have mullion and transom windows with iron lattice lights, with hood-moulds above. To the left and right are three-centred arched entrances with waved hood-moulds and decorative stops. Above each entrance is a square shaped carved plaque with the date 1875 and the signet of W H Poynder. To the rear are late C20 lean-to extensions: all not of special interest.

INTERIOR: No. 25 contains various C19 features including on the ground floor, wood panelling along the walls, some vertically panelled doors, a large fire place (for a former range), a stone bread oven with cast-iron door, and in the two bedrooms upstairs, two identical plain fire surrounds with cast-iron grates. The interior of No. 26 could not be inspected.

HISTORY: No's. 25 and 26 Compton Road were built as part of a group of estate cottages built in Hilmarton in the early 1870s by the Poynder family to designs by the architect and agent Henry Weaver. The cottages, which display a distinctive architectural style and plan-form, correspond with the plans in Weaver's book `Hints on Cottage Architecture', published in 1848.

SUMMARY OF IMPORTANCE: No's. 25 and 26 Compton Road display distinctive, good quality architectural detailing and decoration, expressing the architectural branding' by the Poynder Estate. As such they form part of the important group of listed Poynder Estate cottages in Hilmarton, built in the early 1870s and based on designs by the architect and agent Henry Weaver who had published his ideas on cottage architecture inHints on Cottage Architecture' in 1848.