Boreham House

www.historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list

Formal canal and gardens laid out in the 1720s, with pleasure grounds designed by Richard Woods in the 1770s.

DESCRIPTION

LOCATION, AREA, BOUNDARIES, LANDFORM, SETTING

Boreham House is situated on the north-east edge of the town of Chelmsford, between the villages of Chelmer to the south-west and Boreham to the north-east, and is set in a highly populated part of the county. The House and grounds cover c 13ha and lie just to the south-east of the A12, their north-west boundary formed by the B1137 which runs parallel to the A12. The remaining boundaries are all formed by farmland and are partly ditched or hedged. The ground at Boreham House is generally level, with a slight fall to the south-east towards the River Chelmer valley which lies c 700m beyond the boundary of the site here registered.

ENTRANCES AND APPROACHES

The approach to Boreham House is from the B1137, through gates which lead to twin parallel drives flanking a long formal canal. The drives lead directly to the entrance forecourt below the north-west front of the House.

PRINCIPAL BUILDING

Boreham House (listed grade I) is a small mansion built of dark-brown brick with stucco dressings. The entrance front faces north-west and is of seven bays with a projecting central Tuscan portico over the front door which is reached by a small flight of steps. The main facade comprises a central block of two storeys with flanking single-storey wings and triumphal carriage arch entrances at the north-east and south-west ends. The gardens on the south-east front are reached by a flight of balustrated steps from a central pedimented doorway. Boreham House was designed by James Gibbs and executed by Edward Shepherd for Benjamin Hoare between 1727 and 1728. In the early C19 Thomas Hopper added the grand carriage arches for Sir John Tyrell.

Through the arches on either side of the House are service and carriage courts, and stables.

GARDENS AND PLEASURE GROUNDS

The gardens lie to the north-west and south-east of the House, separated by the House itself and by garden walls which extend beyond each of the wings to the north-east and south-west boundaries of the gardens where they terminate in symmetrical square garden buildings, perhaps banqueting houses. Between the carriage drives on the north-west front is a c 250m long formal canal, laid out when the House was first built in the early C18. At this time each of the drives were lined with elm trees, creating a four row avenue, considered by County Life in 1914 to be 'probably one of the best elm avenues in the country'. During the 1960s all the avenue trees were lost to Dutch elm disease and have since been replaced by a collection of flowering cherry trees, mixed shrub beds, roses, and bedding set in grass on the canal sides.

From the south-east front steps lead onto a gravel terrace which looks over a sloping lawn scattered with a variety of trees and shrubs. The central lawn is free of trees, giving a view down to the small informal lake created by Richard Woods in the 1770s, which runs along the south-east boundary of the gardens. The lake was widened to its present size by Mrs Tufnell-Tyrell at the beginning of the C20. The gently undulating lawn was contoured by Woods to open up the view of the lake and the landscape beyond it, a view which is now (2000) obscured by trees around the water. Woods also formed small hillocks in the grass on which trees were planted, the hillocks but few of the trees surviving. Along the south-west side of the lawn is a larger concentration of trees, many of them later C20 additions to the area where Woods planted a pleasure-ground shrubbery. During the 1930s the south lawn was used for tennis courts and a small formal rose garden laid out to the west of them. Neither the lawns nor the rose garden survive (2000).

A small bridge (unsafe, 2000) leads over the south-west end of the lake to a small area of dense woodland, the probable site of Mrs Tufnell-Tyrell's rock and wild garden, while at the north-east end of the lake a mid C20 plantation of conifers has been added. The boundary planting along the north-east side of the gardens is of mid to late C20 character and at the north-east end, near the House, it screens a depot and storage area used for tractor storage during Ford's occupancy of the House.

PARK

The former parkland lies outside the area here registered. During the first half of the C19 Sir John Tyrell laid some of the surrounding farmland to pasture and embellished it with clumps of trees, adding an icehouse to the field south-west of the canal. Two contemporary writers, in discussing Boreham record that the landscape was 'not very extensive but laid out with great taste' (Virtue 1831; Wright 1836) and both describe only the Woods' pleasure grounds and lake. The icehouse survived only until the end of the C19 and the fields were returned to agricultural use when Henry Ford set up the Institute of Agricultural Engineering in 1930.

KITCHEN GARDEN

The walled kitchen garden lies on the south-west side of the House and is joined to it by the stable courtyard wall. Gateways in the north-west and south-east walls provide links into the rest of the grounds. The land is presently (2000) uncultivated and used for storing farm machinery. At the south-west end of the north-west wall is a square brick garden building, identical to the one which terminates the wall on the north-east side of Boreham House. The walled gardens are of C18 origin, probably built by Benjamin Hoare to accompany his new house in 1728, but certainly in existence by 1777 when Chapman and Andre's county map was published.

REFERENCES

P Muilman, A New and Complete History of Essex I, (1771), p 133

G Virtue, Picturesque Beauties of Great Britain: Essex (1831), p 28

T Wright, History of Essex (1836), p 108

Country Life, 36 (11 July 1914), pp 54-60

N Pevsner and E Radcliffe, The Buildings of England: Essex (1979), p 95

Garden History XV, no 1 (1987), pp 34-36

Boreham House, Essex Landscape Restoration Plan 1, (Chris Blandford Associates 1993)

E Burgess (ed), More about Boreham (1996)

Maps

J Chapman and P Andre, A map of the county of Essex from an actual survey ..., 1777 (Essex Record Office)

Tithe map for Boreham parish, 1838 (D/CT 40), (Essex Record Office)

Survey of Boreham House, 1852 (D/DGe/P35), (Essex Record Office)

OS 6" to 1 mile: 1st edition published 1887

2nd edition published 1897

3rd edition published 1922

OS 25" to 1 mile: 1st edition published 1887

2nd edition published 1897

Illustrations

Two paintings by Wootton (1740) in Hoares Bank.

Archival items

Original documents relating to Boreham House are held in the Hoares Bank Museum; some are available on microfilm at Essex Record Office (D/DU 649).

Description written: September 2000

Edited: September 2001