Homewood, Knebworth

Homewood is an

National Register of Historic Parks and Gardens.^[4]

House

Lutyens designed the house for his mother-in-law,

weatherboarding and plain tiles.^[4] Construction was carried out by the estate builders, to a tight budget.^[5] Sources differ on the dates, ranging from 1900,^[6] to 1903.^[2]

The house's square plan, measuring 100 feet wide by 98 feet deep, has been compared to

service side of the house.^[2]

The lower part of the house brickwork is painted in a cream colour

The interior is classical, with the rooms laid out compactly on a grid of three by three units.

french windows leading onto the terrace.^[2] It appears these windows were much admired by Winston Churchill, on his visits to Knebworth. So much so, that in 1928, when he enlarged Chartwell in Kent, he asked his architect ,Philip Tilden, to copy these three windows, but in a more square dining room, to fit a round table. From the entrance front, the porch is entered via an arched open doorway which Lutyens surmounted with an open, unglazed tympanum.^[5] White painted quoins are used both in the doorway and in the loggias. This leads into a long passage, with two font doors, as at, Greywalls, Gullane, Lothian, built the same year. The glazed door on the right giving access to the vestibule.^[3] This arrangement produced draughts and helped to make the house cold in the winter; Edith's bedroom gained the nickname "Vladivostok".^[5] The house only had one bathroom.^[8]

After her ordeals in

Holloway Prison, Constance's failing health led to a stroke in 1912, and she spent the rest of her life at Homewood with her mother.^[9] She died in 1923, only days after moving out of Homewood to a flat in Paddington, London, in an attempt to restart an active life.^[10]

The composer Elisabeth Lutyens CBE spent many holidays here with her grandmother, and wrote about Homewood in her autobiography, "A Goldfish Bowl" (pub Cassel 1972) as a "delicious house" P5.

Sir Edwin Lutyens visited on the 15th September 1931 and was photographed kneeling in the garden in front of his seated mother in law, the Dowager Countess, on her 90th birthday, which she shared with her twin sister, Lady Loch. Lutyens' wife, Lady Emily Lutyens, and the Dowager Countess of Balfour, ( the former Betty Bulwer-Lytton"), were also present.

When Edith died in 1936, the house passed to her son

Hermione Cobbold. In the early 1970s, the Pollock-Hill family bought the house. They have restored it, mostly following Lutyens' plans, but have added some bathrooms.^[11]

Garden

Beyond the house's southeast front with its stone-flagged terrace are

yew hedges and flowerbeds, and a lower area of lawn below a retaining wall. There are views to the southeast over farmland towards distant hills. Beyond the southwest elevation is another lawned area and a raised croquet lawn.^[4]

Notes

^ ^a ^b Historic England. "Homewood (1102736)". National Heritage List for England. Retrieved 1 December 2015.
^ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f ^g ^h Gradidge (1981), pp. 46–9.
^ ^a ^b ^c ^d Butler (2003), pp. 31–6.
^ ^a ^b ^c Historic England. "Homewood (1000911)". National Heritage List for England. Retrieved 1 December 2015.
^ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e Ridley (2002), pp. 139–42.
^ Richardson (1981), p. 193.
^ ^a ^b Amery (1981), p. 85.
^ Jenkins (2015), p. 71.
^ Jenkins (2015), pp. 195–6.
^ Jenkins (2015), pp. 228–30.
^ Jenkins (2015), pp. 234–6.