Garden courts and other features of mainly C18 date and a landscape park associated with a country house.
HISTORIC DEVELOPMENT
The Hill family owned and lived at the manor which became known as Court of Hill from the Middle Ages. In 1683, as a young man, Andrew Hill rebuilt the house there. Another phase of building works, on the house's surrounds, took place towards the end of the C18, some at least in the last decade of Thomas Hill's life. On his death in 1776 he was succeeded by his elder daughter who had married Thomas Humphrey Lowe of Bromsgrove. This couple's descendants held it until 1926 when the estate was sold to Edward Brocklehurst Fielden, MP, possessor of a cotton fortune, whose other houses included Condover (qv). Court of Hill remains in private hands (1998).
DESCRIPTION
LOCATION, AREA, BOUNDARIES, LANDFORM, SETTING Court of Hill stands c 10km east of Ludlow, on the east side of the B4214 between Cleehill village, 2km to the north, and Tenbury Wells (Worcs), on the south side of Titterstone Clee Hill. The registered area is largely bounded to the west by the B4214 (the walled kitchen garden is west of the road), to the east by a track which forks off it, and to the north and south by field boundaries. The area here registered is c 13ha.
ENTRANCES AND APPROACHES The present, tree-lined approach is directly off the B4214 to the west side of the house. A line of trees through the park marks a disused approach drive from an ornately decorated mid C19 (post-1844) stone lodge on the B4214 at its south-east corner.
PRINCIPAL BUILDING Court of Hill (listed grade II*) is of medieval origin. It was rebuilt in 1683, and altered in the early C19 and 1927. It is of brick with trim and quoins of stone, of seven bays and two storeys and with a tiled hipped roof with four dormers. Its original front door, in the centre of the south side, is now the garden door, and the house is entered via a door on the west side.
GARDENS AND PLEASURE GROUNDS To the south of the house what was earlier the entrance court is now a shrub garden, created in the C20. It has a flagged path from the house's central garden door with lawns to either side. South of the approach from the west is a garden within which stands an octagonal brick dovecote (listed grade II) of 1776.
PARK A small park slopes away from the house to the south. In 1844 it was called The Leasow, and probably only took on a fully parkland character after the tree-lined drive was laid out across it in the mid C19.
KITCHEN GARDEN The kitchen garden lies 400m west of the house, west of the B4214. It is rectangular, aligned north-west to south-east, 85m wide and 50m deep. Built against the centre of the top, north-east wall is a late C18 Temple (listed grade II) comprising a portico with stepped approach, based on the portico of St Paul's, Covent Garden. From it there is a view down the broad, hedged, axial grass path across the garden and to the Teme Valley beyond.
REFERENCES
Country Life, 100 (18 October 1946), pp 716-19
Maps Tithe map for Burford, 1844 (Shropshire Records and Research Centre)
OS 6" to 1 mile: 1st edition surveyed 1883, published 1888 OS 25" to 1 mile: 1st edition surveyed 1884, published 1884 2nd edition surveyed 1902, published 1903
Archival items Sale catalogue, 1926 (688/1), (Shropshire Records and Research Centre)
Description written: December 1998 Register Inspector: PAS Edited: February 2000