Building record 1417301000 - Stables at Little Horwood Manor

Grade II. Stables range of 1938-39 by A S G Butler for Little Horwood Manor, a hunting box.
MATERIALS: Dark buff/brown brick with stone detailing and red tile roofs.
PLAN: Quadrangular.
EXTERIOR: The former stables block stands west of Little Horwood Manor. It is in the same overall style as the house with a quadrangular plan, the front and rear ranges of two storeys and those to the sides of one. There are central front and rear gateway-entrances with a clock tower to the front rising from the ridgeline. Tower-like projections with pyramidal roofs at each corner give the stables a slightly martial appearance.
INTERIOR: Not inspected. The complex provided four flats, presumably for grooms and servants, as well as 14 or more loose boxes.
HISTORY: Little Horwood Manor was commissioned in 1938 by George Gee, an industrialist and partner in Gee Walker Slater (GWS), a major engineering and building firm. The architect was A S G Butler. The site chosen was relatively high ground about a mile north of Little Horwood village, alongside the existing Manor Farm complex. It was supposedly intended to be used as a hunting box, Gee being a keen supporter of the Whaddon Chase Hunt, and this tradition seems borne out by the evidence of the building itself. Reportedly Gee was challenged in the hunting field by one of the Rothschilds to get his new house up in under a year, which was achieved.
The house was apparently never used by Gee and during the war it was requisitioned by the government. Various stories relate to this period in the house's history, although it seems fairly clear the stables were used, inter alia, to house Italian Prisoners-of-War. After World War II Little Horwood Manor was sold, and remained mothballed until 1984 when it was subdivided into five main freehold properties; the stables were similarly subdivided and converted to four residential units.
SOURCES: N. Pevsner and E. Williamson, Buildings of England: Buckinghamshire (2000), 109, 438; Oxford DNB, sv Percy Thrower; sales catalogues in Buckinghamshire Local Studies Library; A S G Butler's obituary in RIBA Library.
REASONS FOR DESIGNATION DECISION
Little Horwood Manor is listed at Grade II, for the following principal reasons:
- The stable block of a notable hunting box complex, akin to a small country house, by ASG Butler, a well-regarded early C20 architect and biographer of Sir Edwin Lutyens.
- Stands alongside and close to the house (which is separately listed) sharing the same materials and overall design themes.
- Despite the subdivision and residential conversion the stables survives little altered on its main external facades.
- Given the nature of the complex the stables are essential to its identity (B1).