Boston Manor Conservation Management Plan June 2011 LDN Architects Boston Manor Introduction The authors gratefully acknowledge the funding support of English Heritage and the London Borough Hounslow, which has allowed the preparation of this report. Hounslow Borough Council with financial support from English Heritage has commissioned a suite of reports for Boston Manor House and Park. The reports include a Conservation Management Plan for the House, Conservation Management Plan for the Park and an Options Appraisal. These reports have been produced by a single team of consultants and each report has been informed by the other. In recognition of the varying range of interests in Boston Manor the findings have been reported in 3 separate volumes. For a full understanding of Boston Manor House and Park all 3 volumes should be read. The Options Appraisal relies on the findings and policies presented in the Conservation Management Plans. The Conservation Management Plans also consider the relationships between the House and the Park and vice versa. In preparing the Conservation Management Plans the study team has had access to previous studies and reports on Boston Manor. The most significant of these is the Richard Griffiths Architects’ Condition Survey, October 2007. This was commissioned on behalf of GlaxoSmithKline for the benefit of Hounslow Borough Council. The study team has also had access to the additional report by Richard Griffiths Architects and Alan Baxter Associates on the Boston Manor House Repair Recommendations, October 2009. These have informed the Conservation Management Plan for the House and have provided the basis for the costings included in the Options Appraisal, updated by recent inspections of the House. The Condition Survey and Repair Recommendations reports are extremely detailed and have not been reproduced within the suite of reports but are available from Hounslow Borough Council. Boston Manor Boston Manor Contents 1.0 Study Team 2.0 Listed Building Description 3.0 Extract from Buildings of England 4.0 Map History 5.0 Architectural Assessment 6.0 Timeline 7.0 Building Phases 8.0 Layout during 19th Century 9.0 Statement of Significance 10.0 Significance Diagrams 11.0 Defining Issues and Conservation Policies 12.0 Current Condition Appendix 1.= Boston Manor Boston Manor 1.0 Study Team Economic Consultant: Jura Consultants Limited 7 Straiton View Straiton Business Park Loanhead Midlothian EH20 9QZ T: 0131 440 6750 F: 0131 450 6751 Architect: LDN Architects 57-59 Bread Street Edinburgh EH3 9AH T: 0131 222 2900 F: 0131 222 2901 Landscape Architect: Peter McGowan Associates 6 Duncan Street Edinburgh EH9 1SZ T: 0131 662 1313 Boston Manor Boston Manor 2.0 Listed Building Description Boston Manor 2.0 Listed Building Description Boston Manor 2.0 Listed Building Description Boston Manor Boston Manor 3.0 Extract from Buildings of England London 3: North West Boston Manor Boston Manor 3.0 Extract from Buildings of England Pages 387 to 389: Boston Manor, Boston Manor Road. Still in its own grounds, although divided into flats in 1963. It is one of a small Buildings of England group of substantial brick houses built in the London neighbourhood in the first half of the c17 that are notable for their early use of a compact double-pile plan. The exterior is attractive, but not in its original state. It is of six by four bays, London 3: North West three storeys high, with a lower service wing to the N. The gables and wide-jointed red brickwork of English bond are of Bridget Cherry and Nikolaus Persner the early c17, but the heavily modelled classical window surrounds and bold dentilled cornice of stone between second and third floors are additions, probably of the later c17, in a not entirely satisfactory effort to bring the house up to date with the style of Jones and Webb. The rainwater heads indeed bear two dates, 1622 and 1670. The house belonged to Mary, Lady Reade, widow of a stepson of Sir Thomas Gresham, who had owned Boston Manor together with Osterley Park. Lady Reade’s initials and the date 1623 also appear on the great chamber ceiling. In 1670 the estate was bought by James Clitherow, an East India merchant. His account book records that the purchase price was £5,336, and that in 1671 he spent £1,439 on the house. This implies quite substantial alterations, which may include the cornice and window surrounds. On the S side remains of a small blocked circular window imply different earlier fenestration; on the N side there are suggestive remnants of a brick plat band which, if carried round, would occupy the space now taken by the ground-floor pediments, but heavy triple keystones. The top-floor windows are simply linked in pairs by a moulded band. In each gable is a round-headed niche. The entrance is on the E side, by a porch which is an obvious c19 Jacobean pastiche. The side windows of a former tripartite entrance (presumably c18) remain. (It is shown on a view of 1794) The doorway surround was added in 1963, when the house was restored by Donald Insall & Partners. The W side is more irregular: the windows of the two centre bays reflect the staircase, and there is no second-floor cornice. On this side there is no break with the service wing, which, although much altered, may be of the same date as the house. It was extended E after 1840. The original plan of the house can only partly be understood. The N part, with the service end, has been much altered, and the centre too, with entrance hall leading to the staircase, may not be in its original form. S of this are the main rooms, facing S and E, divided by a massive spine wall with chimneystacks. The entrance hall, with its coarsely scaled screen and plasterwork, is, like the porch, c19 Jacobean revival; it may originally have been part of the larger room to the S. In the SW room, formerly the library, is a c19 painted ceiling with tentative strapwork and fictive grained beams. The staircase is partly authentic earlier c17; the raking arcaded balustrade with square tapering uprights is echoed by a painted dado discovered during restoration in 1963. But the newels show evidence of reconstruction, and the lions on them (of composition material, not wood) are additions. The broad flight of the stairs ends at the first floor (again perhaps as a result of later alterations). On the walls of the narrower flight continuing to the second floor is a mid c18 wallpaper showing Roman ruins. Dates of the later alterations are problematic. Accounts for 1805-8 record substantial repairs and alterations after the accession of Colonel James Clitherow (1841), including the installation of several fireplaces. Accounts from 1809 to 1820 are missing, and from 1820 to 1840 only minor repairs are recorded. As Faulkner, in his history of Brentford of 1845, mentions a recent fire, the neo-Jacobean work may have been carried out later, perhaps at the instigation of C J Richardson, who published drawings of the 1623 ceiling the The Builder in 1844. The best rooms are on the first floor. The great chamber, measuring 12.50 by 6 metres, is on the E side. In it is the remarkable plaster ceiling of 1623, with an intricate pattern of enriched double ribs with strapwork in lower relief, and an exceptional number of emblematic reliefs in roundels, including the five senses, the four elements (from designs by Gheeraerts), Faith, Hope, and Charity, War and Peace and Plenty. On the chimneypiece a plater overmantel with lovely strapwork and arabesques based on an engraving of 1584 by Abraham de Bruyn. In the centre an oval with the sacrifice of Isaac and the inscription ‘In the Mount of the Lord it shall be seene’ (discovered during restoration beneath the Clitherow motto). The plaster panel is flanked by ferns; the gadrooned shelf below, and the carved panel with festoons of fruit and a head, are in a more Jonesian spirit, quite different from the old-fashioned Netherlandish ornament of the rest. In the smaller state bedchamber to the SW is another strapwork ceiling with a single medallion of Hope, a strapwork frieze (uncovered during restorations), and a later c17 fireplace surround with marble bolection-moulding. Between this room and the staircase a plain anteroom with a marble fireplace of c18 type. In the grounds, brick stables, and a square pigeon house. Boston Manor Boston Manor 4.0 Map History Boston Manor 4.0 Map History Map created by Moses Glover in 1635 of Isleworth Hundred for Algernon Percy, 10th Earl of Northumberland. Top of map points West with property of Sir Edward Spencer (second husband of Lady Mary Reade) shown in bottom right hand corner. Multi- gabled house old manor at Burston? Moses Glover’s Map of 1635 Boston Manor 4.0 Map History John Rocque was a surveyor and cartographer. He began work on a detailed map of London in 1735 and published it in 24 sheets in 1747. This section is shown with South West to the top of the page. Boston House is shown with a square block and projecting north wing and other outbuildings. The north wing is though to post-date this map. Perhaps this suggests other structures were present before the permanent brick wing was built in phases. John Rocque’s Environs of London - 1747 Boston Manor 4.0 Map History The Ealing Parish Survey and Plan of 1777 shows Boston House again as a elongated shape suggesting earlier structures than the kitchen extension of the 1780s. Ealing Parish Map 1777 Boston Manor 4.0 Map History The revised Ealing Parish map of 1828 show Boston House (belonging to James Clitherow) with the same layouts as 1777.