Heritage Now #10

FROM THE SECTOR

rare late-19th-century horse infirmary with a well balanced composition and plan-form that still re flects its specialist function. It retains many fixtures relating to its original veterinary role, including a horse sling, cobble floors and tethering rings. It forms part of a well-preserved group of buildings of considerable importance reflecting on the reforms put in place after the Crimean War. Sphinx Hill, also known as the Egyptian House, is now Grade II* listed. The house in Moulsford, Oxfordshire, was built in 1999 to designs by John Outram, making it the youngest listed building in the United Kingdom. It is described as a rare and individualistic ‘tour-de-force of domestic Post Modernism’. 14 Beacon Bottom, Swanwick, near Fareham, Hamp shire is listed at Grade II as a dwelling dating to at least the 17th century which is illustrative of modest vernacular domestic buildings and local building traditions of the period. A significant proportion of pre-1700 building fabric survives, including most of the timber frame with jowled posts, floor-plates, a substantial brick stack and the queen-post roof structure. The cottage’s original lobby-entry plan also remains legible. It now sits within a modern housing estate currently under development. Two Roman Catholic churches have been listed at Grade II − St Mary, in Gosport, Hampshire and St. Mary and the Presbytery, in East Hendred, near Wantage, Oxfordshire. The former was built between 1855 and 1857 on the site of an earlier chapel, to designs by R. E. Philips. It was modified in 1874 by Henry John Hansom and extended between 1897 and 1898 with the construction of the adjacent presbytery. The war memorial (also Grade II) stands separately and is a tall crucifix under an open-pediment cover that was added in 1919. At Wantage the architect was Charles Alban Buckler of Oxford. The church, constructed with a brick core faced in Boxhill stone, was completed and consecrated in 1865. The priests’ house was completed later that year on the opposite side of the road in red brick with gothic detailing to the windows. A bridge was built to link the presbytery to the church to avoid the priest breaking the law that prohibited Catholics from wearing clerical dress in the street. The present, modern bridge (1970s) replaced the timber-framed, Victorian original, and is not included in the listing. Together with Godfrey's Farmhouse to the west and the school to the south side, they form a loosely square group arrangement, characterised by Betjeman and Pevsner as ‘a Puginesque dream come true’.

Library at Downside Abbey. Former pupil, Francis Pollen, designed the monastery library to house the great collection of books, manuscripts and archives on six floors of varying sizes and shapes. (Rabanus Flavus)

Sphinx House, a ‘tour-de-force of domestic Post-Modernism’. (Philip Halling)

St Mary’s Roman Catholic Church, East Hendred. (Private collection)

St Mary’s Roman Catholic Church, Gosport. (Hassocks5489)

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HERITAGE NOW (03/2024) WINTER 2024