Survey Data
Reg No
11802018
Rating
Regional
Categories of Special Interest
Architectural, Historical, Social
Previous Name
The Dispensary
Original Use
House
In Use As
Office
Date
1860 - 1900
Coordinates
288070, 240236
Date Recorded
21/06/2002
Date Updated
--/--/--
Description
Detached five-bay two-storey house, c.1880, with advanced door opening to centre and pair of two-bay single-storey flanking box bay windows. In use as dispensary, 1939. Refenestrated, c.1980. Now in use as offices. Gable-ended roof with slate. Decorative red clay ridge tiles. Timber eaves. Cast-iron rainwater goods. Rendered walls to ground floor. Unpainted. Continuous string/sill course to first floor. Roughcast walls to first floor. Unpainted. Rendered piers to corners. Square-headed openings (including paired window openings to box bay windows). Stone sills. Replacement aluminium casement windows, c.1980. Rendered pilaster doorcase with moulded necking, frieze, cornice and blocking course over. Replacement glazed aluminium door, c.1980, with sidelights and overlights. Set back from road in own grounds.
Appraisal
Whitestown House is a fine and well-maintained symmetrically-planned building that is of social and historic importance for its subsequent use as a dispensary/medical centre from the early twentieth century. The house retains most of its original form and is distinguished by the presence of an advanced doorcase and box bay windows to ground floor, typical of late-Victorian middle-size domestic architecture. The juxtaposition of render with roughcast to first floor also achieves an attractive effect. The house retains most of its original features and materials, including a slate roof with decorative ridge tiles, while the re-instatement of timber fenestration might restore a more accurate representation of the original appearance. It is possible, too, that the interior retains some early or original fittings of note. Bounded to front by a low boundary wall with simple iron railings, the house is a prominent and attractive landmark on the road leading out of Kilcock to the north-west.