Building record 1541300000 - Peace Haven, 4 Dibden Hill

Circa 1846, for the Socialist settlement founded by P H J Baume. One storey, 2 bays. Slate roof with diagonal chimney shaft at each end. Central door segmental headed windows, now paired modern casements. Roughcast. Large bungalow extension at rear. Included for historic interest (B1).
There have been changes to the roofing materials and chimneys since the 1980s. The roof is now clad with concrete pantiles rather than slate, and the diagonal shaft has been removed from the stump of the chimney at the right-hand end. A photograph of 1978 suggests that the description was wrong in suggesting that there was another chimney at the left end. The appearance of the c.1846 front build otherwise remains the same. The cottage clearly demonstrates the very small, humble scale and simplicity of the original building and its very modest accommodation. It is also clear that this cottage aligns directly with the similar frontage buildings on the two neighbouring plots immediately to the east, giving a run of three houses of the same very modest character. All of these houses have been
extended to the rear, but the surviving frontage buildings form a very distinctive group and associate in similar manner with the lane. While later houses have been constructed along the south side of the lane, and have replaced the earlier buildings at the east end of the lane, the very narrow, unmade character of the lane contributes to the setting of the 1846 cottages, as does the rural location with fields all round and particularly visible on the slope of the hillside across the main Misbourne valley.
Peace Haven and the two other surviving cottages were built by Baume as part of a development comprising eight cottages and two 2-storey houses in all. Pevsner's 'Buildings of England: Buckinghamshire' states that Baume was a French-born socialist, and that his development was a Chartist colony similar to those at Heronsgate, Chorleywood, and at Minster Lovell in Oxfordshire. Baume may have been less of a socialist than 'an eccentric and nomadic French entrepreneur who built up his wealth on illicit activities and was often found to be on the wrong side of the law', and that the buildings and the plot sizes at Dibden Hill differ from the above Chartist colonies set up on much truer socialist principles by Fergus O'Connor. Other researchers credit Baume with radical sympathies for the urban poor. From this it would seem that the Dibden Hill development was 'sort of socialist' in concept, the 1851 census suggesting that the cottages were occupied by people who had been brought in from
elsewhere, all born in London or Northamptonshire. The research recognises that the size of the houses and the plots were far too small to provide anyone with a living, as intended by the Chartists, and that the development ran into financial difficulties, with any ideology shortlived.
The surviving cottages at Dibden Hill reflect the very particular social interests and concerns of the mid- l 9th century, as reflected in other gentlemanly attempts to improve workers' housing and in, for instance, Dickens' descriptions of the life of the poor in London, and that are highly distinctive in expressing this concern/opportunity in the rural environment of Chalfont St Giles. The circumstances of the very narrow lane isolated away from the main settlement in the countryside cannot be explained without reference to the very small size and regularity of the cottages and without some understanding of the origins of the development. While the surviving cottages are not of national interest in offering the purest or most unaltered evidence of a socialist movement, they do point to a very distinct phase in the story of the local community (B2).