Denford Park, Kintbury - Hungerford Virtual Museum

DenfordPark, Kintbury, Berkshire
By the time the estate was sold in 1924 the house was a large one; there were then six
principal bedrooms and two dressing rooms in the Main House, nine further bedrooms
in the adjacent link block and Service Range, as well as seven further servant
bedrooms. The house by this time was equipped with central heating, electric light
and a telephone.
4.4 Phase Four: 1939
As soon as Thomas Harrison Hughes bought Denford Park he set about radically
extending it and clearly had the resources to achieve that very quickly and, fortunately
for him, immediately before the outbreak of the Second World War and all the
inevitable shortages of building materials and builders that it caused.
His architect, George Baynard, added large but not quite identical wings on either side
of the original core of the house. The West Wing was built against the existing west
elevation of the house whilst the East Wing replaced the earlier link between it and
the Service Wing.
Both wings were well crafted and faced with virtually identical Bath stone ashlar and
detailed to match the original build. Each was three bays wide and superficially
seemed to be symmetrical extensions of the Main House. However, the East Wing
was slightly shorter, but slightly wider, than the West Wing. The West Wing
terminated in a ground-floor bow detailed to match the central bow of the garden front
of Wyattville's original design.
Internally, the West Wing provided a large single reception room on the ground floor
- the largest in the house - with bedroom, dressing room and bath room on the floor
above. The East Wing contained a new entrance and lobby as well as a large
Cloakroom and Gun Room on the ground floor, with bedrooms above; it also
contained a new service stair, possibly replacing an earlier one, and had cellars
beneath.
Changes to the original Main House probably included the remodelling of the stair
balustrade as well as the creation of a new corridor link through the north end of the
south-western reception room to the West Wing. The flooring in the main hall and
corridors was probably also renewed at this time.
Further changes were made to the buildings in the service area, where the original
overhanging eaves were replaced, on the principal elevations, by plain parapets to
match those of the Main House and the two new wings.
Aesthetically, the two new wings were very well crafted and quite well proportioned
and, internally, some of the replica doors and windows were carefully designed to
match much earlier work. However, the creation of these two tall wings, coupled
with the addition of parapets to the service ranges, unbalanced the original
asymmetrical hierarchy of the house.
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Richard K Morriss & Associates, Historic Buildings Consultants, Bromlow House, Bromlow, Shropshire, SYS OEA