Silbury including gate piers and plinth wall, Cambridge, Cambridgeshire

Summary

Edwardian Baroque house, built 1906 to the designs of Amian Lister Champneys, now in use as student residence of Trinity College.

Description

Edwardian Baroque house, built 1906 to the designs of Amian Lister Champneys, now in use as student residence of Trinity College.

MATERIALS: brown brick laid in Flemish bond, with red brick dressings, having a machine tile roof covering.

PLAN: the house faces west onto Grange road, and is approximately rectangular on plan with a single-storey projection to the north, formerly used as a boiler room and store room.

EXTERIOR: Silbury House has a two-storey elevation under a hipped roof with a dormer attic, a modillioned eaves cornice, and two chimneystacks to the east slope. The attic comprises two bowed dormers to the west slope with five casement windows to each, hung tiles beneath and a flat roof. There are single canted dormers to the north and south slopes, and two canted dormers to the east slope, with each having six casement windows and a flat roof. The front (west) elevation to Grange Road is symmetrical in its layout, having brown brick walls with red brick quoins and surrounds, and a red brick platband over the ground floor.

The front elevation has 14 window bays to the first floor arranged in four groups of three, two either side of a central pair of four-over-four pane sash windows. Each group consists of a six-over-nine pane sash window flanked to either side by a two-over-two sash window. On the ground floor, there are three bays of two-over-three pane sash windows either side of the centre. A central segmental hood, supported on console brackets with scrolled decorative detailing, surmounts a half-glazed door with a plain overlight, and a six-over-six pane timber sash window. The single storey range to the north has three casement windows to its front elevation.

The garden elevation has a symmetrical composition comprising twelve bays of six-over-nine pane sash windows to the first floor, and nine-over-nine pane sash windows to the ground floor. The windows are arranged in pairs to either side of two full-height bays, with each bay containing three windows on each floor. The central openings to the ground floor consist of a half-glazed timber door with plain overlight with a nine-over-nine pane sash window to the south.

A central, flat roofed, single-storey projection extends from the ground floor of the south elevation. Detailed with a modillion cornice the roof of the projection rises in a round arch over a glazed double-leaf door surmounted by a plain overlight and fanlight. The door is flanked to either side by a four-over-six pane sash window. At first floor a six-over-nine pane sash window sits central with the canted bay above in the attic.

INTERIOR: the Edwardian Baroque character of the exterior is continued on the interior with well-preserved classically inspired details. Original cornices, skirting boards, and raised and fielded timber doors survive throughout the house. The half-glazed door of the front elevation leads through a central entrance hall to the garden door. Turning right from the entrance hall through a round-headed arch, the stair hall contains parquet flooring and a double-height, open-well stair to the first floor, with carved balusters interspersed with simple panel splat balusters and scrolled ornament to the brackets of the open-string and to the base of the square newel post. Leading off the stair hall are doors to the south and east to the larger and grander rooms of the house, now in use as a professor’s study and academic offices. The chimney breast within the study includes splayed plaster work above the picture rail with a stepped and panelled timber surround beneath, the grate is now blocked. Shelved niches sit between the windows of the east and west walls. To the left off the entrance hall, is a half-glazed door leading to a corridor, off which are bedrooms to the east, a kitchen to the north, and a service stairs to the west.

On the first floor, the rooms to the south and east of the landing overlook the garden to the east. These rooms contain simple cornices and elegant fire surrounds, one of which is comparable in scale and design to that in the study whilst others are smaller, elegant and simply tiled (some are blocked). From the landing a half-glazed door leads to a corridor, having bedrooms to the east and north, and a service stair to the west lit by the north dormer window. On the second floor is a range of bedrooms occupying the spaces created by the dormer windows, and each bedroom contains a simple fireplace. The south dormer on the west elevation is utilised as a small kitchenette by those occupying the second floor.

SUBSIDIARY FEATURES: a plinth wall with stone coping stands to the west to Grange Road, having two sets of brown brick gate piers with red brick quoins and carved stone capstones.

History

Cambridge is situated on the southern edge of the Fens at the highest navigable point of the River Cam. The original Celtic settlement had grown up on the north bank but the Romans established the small town of Durovigutum at the strategically important junction of four major roads. The Saxon occupation spread to the south of the river, and the Normans reaffirmed the strategic importance of the site by building a castle, which led to the expansion of the settlement. Cambridge soon became a prosperous town in which several religious houses were established, and these attracted sufficient students for Henry III to recognise the town as a seat of learning in 1231. Most of the fifteen colleges in existence before the Reformation had evolved from the cloistered world of monastic scholarship. Additional colleges and university buildings have continued to be established up to the present day and much new housing was built during the inter-war period and post-war period.

The development of the former medieval West Fields began around 1870. This land, covering approximately 200 acres, was owned primarily by the colleges, notably St John’s, which had always strongly resisted any building west of the Backs (the stretch of land which runs along the back of the riverside colleges). It was the loss of college revenue from the agricultural depression that led to their decision to lease the land in building plots. Three new institutions were established – Newnham College in 1875, Ridley Hall in 1877, and Selwyn Hostel (now College) in 1879 – and suburban houses in various styles from Queen Anne to Arts and Crafts and neo-Georgian were built piecemeal over almost half a century. The demand for such large family homes was partly fuelled by a new statute passed in 1882 that finally allowed dons to marry without having to give up their fellowships. The main arteries of development were West Road, Madingley Road and Grange Road which forms the central spine road running north-south through the suburb.

Although economic necessity had forced the colleges to allow building on the land, they were determined to keep a strict control over the residential development which consisted almost entirely of high end middle class housing, interspersed with university playing fields, without any community facilities such as churches or shops. There was no overall plan but the landowners ensured that it was restricted to an affluent market by issuing leases that specified numerous conditions, including minimum plot sizes, minimum house costs, specification of superior building materials, usually red brick and tiles, and had stringent dilapidation clauses to ensure that property values did not deteriorate. In the mid-1880s, St John’s College for instance, specified one-acre plots with a minimum house cost of £1500 on its Grange Road estate, and half-acre plots with a house cost of at least £1000 on Madingley Road. To put this in context, in 1906 the sum of £1000 was considered well above the price of a substantial suburban villa. The great majority of building leases were taken up by individuals who commissioned either local or London-based architects, many of whom are now considered to be amongst the finest of the late Victorian / Edwardian age, notably M. H. Baillie Scott who designed nine houses in west Cambridge, E. S. Prior, J. J. Stephenson, and Ernest Newton. Most of these houses were designed to accommodate at least two live-in servants, as shown by the census returns, and some had stables; although by 1910 there were requests either to convert these to garages or to build ‘motor houses’, as they were then known.

Grange Road originated as a laneway from Barton Road to Grange Farm, and contained no permanent buildings until the south section of the road was developed from the 1860s onwards. The first building lease granted by St John’s College on Grange Road was in 1884 for the construction of Elmside, or 49 Grange Road. Between 1884 and 1914 the college granted more than sixty building leases in St Giles to private individuals, and also leased land to other colleges for playing fields. The Grange Road Estate was opened up by the building of a new road (Herschel Road) in 1885 running west from Grange Road towards Grange Farm. As development occurred, roads branched out to the west, and Grange Road gradually progressed north until it was connected with Madingley Road in 1910.

Silbury, 60 Grange Road was erected by William Sindall in 1906, a builder whose yards were located in Newnham, on one of five plots leased from St John’s College in 1899. The house was built to the designs of Amian Lister Champneys (1879-1951), architect and author. Amian Champneys was the son of the esteemed Victorian architect Basil Champneys (1842-1935), one of the pioneers of the ‘Queen Anne’ style, whose most notable designs include Rylands Library in Manchester (listed at Grade I) and Mansfield College in Oxford (listed at Grade II*). An alumnus of Trinity College, Cambridge, Basil Champneys designed a multitude of academic buildings in Cambridge, including a number of Grade II* and Grade II listed buildings for the newly-founded Newnham College between 1874 and 1913, and 48 Grange Road (c1880, listed at Grade II).

Amian Champneys was a graduate of New College, Oxford, receiving a BA in 1902. He published on the subject of public libraries in 1907, offering best practice and advice on library construction and facilities. He also published on Irish ecclesiastical architecture in 1910, as well as a book of short detective stories in 1928 titled ‘The Incredible Adventures of Rowland Hern’ under the pseudonym Nicholas Olde.

Amian Lister Champneys is associated with two listed buildings: Silbury and Whewell House, 60 and 62 Grange Road respectively. Both houses were executed in 1906 in the same curious Edwardian Baroque style. No other buildings by Amian Champneys are included on the National Heritage List for England (2014), but he is known to have also designed St Alban’s High School for Girls, Hertfordshire in 1908, which is locally listed. Elevations, sections and plans of the St Albans school published in The Building News, 1907, show clear stylistic similarities with Champneys’ residential houses on Grange Road, having symmetrical elevations, segmental headed window surrounds to the first floor and classical details.

Although the symmetrical front elevation appears to have been arranged with twin doors, the plan of the interior and street directories confirm that Silbury was in use by a single occupant. Silbury functioned as a Red Cross Convalescent Home or Auxiliary Hospital during the Second World War (1939-45), during which time it was also occupied by Rev. EH Longland. Silbury was converted to student accommodation for undergraduate and postgraduate students of Trinity College in the late C20.

Reasons for Listing

Silbury,60 Grange Road, built in 1906 to the designs of Amian Lister Champneys, is listed at Grade II for the following principal reasons:
* Architectural interest: for its attractive well-proportioned composition and imaginative treatment of classical motifs, which are characteristic of the Edwardian Baroque style;
* Architect: as a building designed by architect Amian Lister Champneys, son of the acclaimed Victorian architect Basil Champneys, who has other buildings on the List;
* Interior: for the quality craftsmanship and high degree of survival of interior details, including staircases, joinery, and fire surrounds;
* Historic interest: as part of an exceptional suburban development in West Cambridge which encompasses the work of some of the most notable architects of the day;
* Group value: for its group value with numerous listed houses and college buildings on Grange Road, notably 62 Grange Road by Amian Lister Champneys (1906), Cambridge University Library by Sir Giles Gilbert Scott (1931-4), and 48 Grange Road by Basil Champneys (c1880).

External Links

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