FIR HILL

Layout

 

There is a description of the house, presumably as constructed in 1765, in Particulars of Sale from May 1797:

 

‘delightfully situate on an Eminence, at the Entrance of the Town of Droxford; comprising a genteel commodious uniform substantial Brick Dwelling House.’

 

Inside the house were four servants’ bedrooms on the second floor (attic) level, four good bed chambers with bow windows, two dressing rooms and a store room on the first floor level and an entrance hall, two parlours, dining room, butler’s pantry, housekeeper’s room, kitchen and brew house on the ground floor level. In the basement were a laundry, dairy, wine vaults, and ale and beer cellars.

 

Outside was a courtyard with a coach house for two carriages, a four stall stable, an open harness room, a coachman’s chamber and a loft. The grounds comprised a forecourt, a shrubbery, a pleasure ground (i.e. the garden area connecting the parkland and garden immediately adjacent to the house), a garden planted with a variety of fruit trees and two paddocks.

 

What is interesting about this description is that the modern footprint of the Georgian house does not have room for two dressing rooms or a store room on the first floor level, or for a kitchen and brew house on the ground floor level. There must have been an annexe on the south side containing the missing rooms to match that on the north side that contained a bathroom at the first floor level and a boiler room on the ground floor level.

​

A tithe map from the 1840s shows additional buildings: one on the boundary of the paddock to the north east of the house and a second to the south of the house. Remains of the foundations of the first building were uncovered in 2005 when a new paddock fence was installed. It may have been an orangery or greenhouse as vented tiles were found there. The second seems to be to the immediate south of the house and, in the 1872 map, outside the walled garden. These seem to have been built some time after the main house in 1765 but it is not clear by whom and occupation of the house in the 1840s is to some extent guesswork. One possibility is that it is the house for Tom Smith's hunting hounds.

 

In the Ordnance Survey map of 1872 both buildings are still there. The walled garden with trees and a formal garden to the south east are clearly shown.

​

By 1896, both buildings have gone but there is a new building outside the stable block, and the glasshouse on the east side of the house has been built, either by Tom Smith again (he was a keen gardener) or Reverend King. The official 1895-7 Ordnance Survey map is less detailed but the building by the stable block and the glasshouse are still visible in the 1909 map. In 2006, the remains of the building outside the stable block was unearthed: it was built of red brick with a slate roof. It may have been a double pigsty or two dog kennels.