7 Deards End Lane
Lutyens’s involvement at Knebworth’s garden village included an unrealised 1910 masterplan (with planner Thomas Adams), but survives in a Neo‑Georgian golf clubhouse of 1908, the golf‑manager’s Beacon House of 1912, and two houses in Deard’s End Lane—No. 3 (1912) and No. 7 (designed 1901 as paired cottages, later combined).
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Description
In 1903 Lord Lytton, inspired by Letchworth, conceived the idea of a garden village, and in 1904 consulted his brother-in-law, Lutyens, before turning to Pepler & Allen for a masterplan. Sites were being sold in 1908, but in 1910 Lytton returned to Lutyens, who produced a revised plan in association with Thomas Adams, consulting surveyor, who had previously worked at Letchworth. Work started formally in 1912, was interrupted by the First World War, and continued after it with A. & J. Soutar as consulting architects, following their work at Ruislip Manor and Hampstead Garden Suburb. There is little evidence of Lutyens’s formal scheme, but he included in it his Neo-Georgian Golf Club House, 1908, on the northern edge of the village. A straight road led up to this (an effect now lost) with Beacon House, on its w side, built in 1912 for the golf club manager, joining up with the pre-existing lane that winds back down to the mainly c18 buildings of Deard’s End Farm, Park Lane. Nos. 3 and 7 Deard’s End Lane are also by Lutyens, the former 1912 but the latter designed in 1901 as a pair of cottages, soon converted to a single dwelling. (Bettley et al, 2019, pp.344-5)
Bibliography
Bettley J, Pevsner N, Cherry B (2019) Hertfordshire. The Buildings of England. New Haven: Yale University Press.
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