The Victorian Society recently visited Ken Hill in Snettisham. The property is an early example of a neo Queen Anne style and Grade II listed. Ken Hill was built as a retreat in 1878-80 by John James Stevenson (1831–1908) for Yorkshire industrialist Sir Edward Green (1831-1923) the inventor of ‘Green’s Economiser’. It is the type of building that might need a Heritage Statement.
The reception rooms are on the piano nobile and arranged to correspond with the recommendations contained in Stevenson’s House Architecture (1880) with the mediaeval sequence of kitchen/screens, hall and solar. It is the first major provincial example of the ‘Queen Anne’ or ‘Domestic Revival’ style.
Externally the front elevation is a well-conceived three bay design with a projecting gabled bay and dominated by four arched headed sash windows with thick glazing bars. An external staircase with stone balusters leads to the main entrance which has an elaborate piano nobile doorcase with fluted columns and keystone. The roof is steeply pitched with four sashed and glazing barred dormers with broken pediment gables with central roundels.
In 1871 Stevenson and Edward Robert Robson (1836 – 1917) became partners, Robson having been appointed architect to the London School Board. Soon they became pioneers of the Queen Anne domestic revival, which provided a flexible and inexpensive idiom for Robson’s new schools.
The image shows the top of the main staircase, chosen to show the relationship of the corridor and supporting roof struts as witnessed in many of Stevenson and Robson’s Board Schools.
Contact Theatre and Heritage if you would like a Heritage Statement.
