Buyer Beware

by Roderick Gradidge

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A surprising number of Lutyens’s very best houses are for sale, or have recently been sold. They include the best part of his first important house, Chinthurst Hill, the splendid ‘Elizabethan’ chalk and flint Marshcourt, and one of the most imaginative of all the houses, Folly Farm, Sulhampstead. Since Lutyens houses are on the wish list of not just wealthy men but footballers and television stars the press has had a field day attributing any turn of the century large half timbered house in Surrey to Lutyens. Estate agents are more chary in their attributions having some years ago sold at Philip Tilden house as Lutyens’s and found themselves sued for their pains. Recently a TV personality bought the enormous and very Lutyensque Hascombe Court and every property columnist ascribed it to Lutyens, which is perhaps not surprising since his very heavily altered Hoe Farm of 1890, now called High Hascombe is nearby, and not too far away is Winkworth Farm of 1895. Just to add to the confusion in this very small village, just south of Munstead, there are also two houses by that great arts and crafts Scottish architect Robert Lorimer, Whinfold of 1903, to which Walter Tapper later made additions and Highbarn of 1901-3, which could easily be mistaken for a Lutyens house.

These are all houses in the Surrey style and frankly Lorimer’s High Barn is more desirable than Lutyens’s High Hascombe in its present state, but it is not by Lutyens and so does not carry the Lutyens premium. Purchases would be advised to look most carefully if offered a Lutyens house, it would probably be best to consult the Lutyens Trust, who are as likely as anyone to be able to authenticate it.

Footnote from the following edition: In our last Newsletter we mistakenly referred to Hoe Farm, Hascombe as High Hascombe and we are grateful to Dr Nigel Barker for pointing this out. So for the record here is a checklist of buildings by Lutyens and others in Hascombe. Hoe Farm (additions); Winkworth Farm (additions); Park Hatch Lodges; High Hascombe (formerly Sullingstead); High Barn (Sir Robert Lorimer); Hascombe Court (J D Coleridge).