Late 19th/early 20th century timber framed house, The Gray House, Hackmans Lane (EHER 49990)

The Gray House is a detached dwelling of late 19th/early 20th century date. It was built in 1897 for John Coleman Kenworthy, a Christian Socialist writer and publisher who established a short-lived Utopian colony at Purleigh based on the principles of the prominent Russian author and philosopher Leo Tolstoy. It comprises a detached two storey house of somewhat irregular plan, of brick, concrete and timber framed construction and externally roughcast throughout with a pantiled roof. The building was earmarked for demolition in 2023 when it underwent a building recording survey, but it is unclear if it has yet been demolished.

February 2023. Heritage assessment. The Gray House is a detached dwelling of late 19th/early 20th century date with extensive modern additions and alterations, situated within its own curtilage on the SW side of Hackmans Lane. It comprises a detached two storey house of somewhat irregular plan, of brick, concrete and timber framed construction and externally roughcast throughout with a pantiled roof. The dwelling (originally known as Grey House) was built in 1897 for John Coleman Kenworthy, a Christian Socialist writer and publisher who established a short-lived Utopian colony at Purleigh based on the principles of the prominent Russian author and philosopher Leo Tolstoy. The original house appears to have been a single storey rectangular structure, of timber framed and concrete construction; however, the plans of this house as proposed in 1897 bear little resemblance to the form of the building as shown on a later OS map of 1922 or indeed to its current layout and appearance. It is possible that the lower portion of the main rectangular gabled range aligned NW-SE represents the original building as erected by Kenworthy in the late 1890s. At some time between 1897 and 1922 (probably after the property was sold in 1910) the house was substantially enlarged and refurbished. The internal layout of the house at ground floor level appears to have been completely remodelled with a single-storey gabled extension added to the NW (housing the present study), leaving little trace of the internal arrangements of the house as originally built by Kenworthy, while an upper storey (accommodating four bedrooms and a bathroom) and attic (containing two additional bedrooms) were also added by the early 1920s. The existing internal layout and elements of the fixtures and fittings within the main portion of the house (including the plaster ceilings, panelled walls and staircases, along with most of the surviving fireplaces at ground and first floor level) appear to be wholly consistent with a date in the 1910s-1920s. Further additions to the house were made in the late 20th century, with the construction of a two-storey rear extension (housing a ground floor bathroom and storeroom with a bedroom above) and a conservatory in the early 1990s; while the existing kitchen/breakfast room extension to the rear of the house was built in about 2003. <1> The building was recorded in advance of demolition. Google Streetview imagery from May 2024 show the building as still extant, but with clear work being undertaken to its NW face. This could be the start of the demolition process. <2>