NHER 33649 (Building record) - Hill House, The Street

June 1998. Visited.
House at the north end of the village set at an angle across the southeast corner of road junction. Only the rear was seen in detail but the listed building description (S1) notes that the façade is of five bays and two storeys, built of brick. Five first floor and four ground floor windows of wooden-cross type with iron casements. The central bay projects slightly and a platband is hipped above the door where a pediment has been replaced by a 19th century canopy. Dentilled cornice; roof of black glazed pantiles. Dutch gables at each end, the gable walls being partly of flint.
The rear elevation, hardly mentioned in (S1), is in fact most remarkable. The western section has at first floor level three triangles of brick, as if the marks of attached gables (though not so). The triangles project upwards into rectangular areas of flint and random brick separated by windows (one blocked) with toothed brick quoins; there are toothed brick jambs at each end of the section. Each 'triangle' contains four levels of nesting holes, one
in the apex, two below, three below that and four holes on the fourth level. Below the triangles three rows of irregularly spaced nesting holes stretch across the whole section. The ground floor walling is obscured by bushes. A vertical offset two thirds of the way along divides this section from an area with a ground floor of flint and random brick, and an upper floor of red brick with no skintlings and a dentilled cornice.
The interior of the house has a winding stair ((S1) says dogleg of about 1700) in line with the door. The south room has in the north wall a wooden rounded arch to the stair hall, with a similar door each side to closets between the room and the hall. (S1) notes a similar arched door in the north room.
A barn attached to the north gable, of brick with central doors, of later date is mentioned in (S1) 'for group value'.
(S1) dates the building to about 1700 which may well be the date of the façade, gables and interior but the rear suggests an older flint building, at least partly single storey, was incorporated.
The arrangement of nesting holes is remarkable, perhaps unique.
The same family has owned the house for 300 years.
Drawings (S2) in file.
E. Rose (NLA), 7 July 1998.