his family.
Hoglands is a Grade II listed, medieval, timber framed Hall house in Perry Green, East Hertfordshire and was the family home of the Sculptor Henry Moore, his wife Irene and daughter Mary from 1940 and for the remainder of Moore’s life and career. The Henry Moore Foundation acquired the property in 2004 from the Moore family and asked us for a competitive submission to restore the house, Hoglands, and the Top/Etching Studio, which was Moore’s, modest work space at Perry Green, where he produced many of the famous sculptures we all know today. The house is surrounded by The Henry Moore Foundation sculpture parks and Moore’s later workshops and a gallery, all of which are open to the public.
The Henry Moore Foundation set a brief for the restoration and conservation of Hoglands, the Top Studio & Etching Studio with an emphasis of maintaining the integrity, look and exact feel of the house as it had been in the early 1960’s, during the height of Moore’s success, while allowing it to be accessible by the public and to enable visitors to have the very rare opportunity to experience Moore’s intimate studio environment, and also to come into contact with the day to day lifestyle of this famous artist.
Any new intervention to allow this building to be opened up to the public, made accessible and comply with modern building and health and safety regulations had to be hidden. Also of high importance was the careful design of a staircase up to the 1st floor of the house, which was to become the caretakers self contained flat. This stair had to be accessed independently from the public ground floor and directly from the exterior but had to be discreet. It was essential that this staircase would not compromise the exterior of the property, so we hid it within the Pantry cupboard and enclosed the small adjacent overhang with an exact copy of the external Top Kitchen Crittall door that was made up and inserted to maintain the rear view. The pantry cupboard is visible from a service window in the sitting room and to retain this important feature, we re-fitted all the shelves, bottles and jars into it, underneath the new staircase, so it looked as it was originally when viewed through the service window.
The Moore’s initially rented the right-hand half of this unpretentious property and subsequently purchased the whole house. In 1959 they built a brick extension to the rear to provide a Bedroom and Bathroom for their daughter, Mary, on the first floor and a large Sitting Room on the ground floor in which they could entertain the many prestigious guests and clients that came to visit Henry and view his works. Other small extensions at that time included a small Top Kitchen/Pantry and a Sunroom which overlooked the rear gardens that were designed and cared for by Irene. Also built were two Greenhouses, both of which were filled with a variety of cacti.
The house had several structural problems when we first started work. The lower part of the oak frame was mostly rotten, caused by the impermeable 1960’s cement render, so we repaired the oak sole plate and underpinned the plinth with a shallow limecrete footing to allow natural movement of the timber frame building. The walls were timber lathed and a breathable lime hair plaster was applied, to avoid future decay. The roof tiles were stripped and the crown post roof, which was in poor condition, was repaired, felted, insulated and re tiled.
The challenge to allow full accessibility into the house for buggies and wheelchairs was met by adjusting door widths and floor levels sensitively, where they were concrete, and by replacing them with limecrete at the desired level. The house was originally built on two distinct levels and we devised a visitor route through the house that would allow both of these levels to remain and help to display the house as it had been when it was divided into two halves.
It was very significant to us that many of the quirky features in and around the building were preserved. These were constructed in Moore’s time by Frank Farnham, a local man, and they give an insight into Moore’s personality and lifestyle. Some examples of these are:
- The metal prop in the hall off the sitting room. This was inserted to support the corner of the house when it was opened up to build the sitting room. The prop was sinking under the weight of the house and was almost certainly a temporary solution but its presence was important so, rather than replacing it with something more suitable, we put a small limecrete footing underneath to provide additional support. There is a similar retained prop in the Dining Room.
- The two roof lights on the rear, which are literally two small rectangles of wired glass inserted into holes made between rafters and water-proofed around the edges with newspaper! These, needless to say, had leaked but, as their ad hoc nature was noteworthy, rather than replace them with a proper rooflight we simply lead flashed neatly around the glass to make them weather-proof.
- The picturesque sparse laying pattern of the Top/Etching Studio slates was done to reduce the slates needed by 1/3. This pattern is distinctive and showed that Moore was not frivolous with his money. This detail is obviously not the traditional way of laying slates, and indeed it had leaked, but we were determined to keep the pattern so we used a breather felt, a thin multi-foil insulation and battened the roof, so the roofer could lay the slates using the same design, whilst making the roof water tight.
- The tie beams in the Top Studio had been cut by Moore, so he could get his large sculptures in and out. Through cutting the ties the roof had spread and the walls had bulged. The missing ties were intrinsic to the understanding and history of this building, so we did no want to replace them or insert buttresses on the exterior that would be visible. With the Structural Engineer, we designed a cranked steel beam that tied the walls together but was hidden within the roof slope. This allowed the space to remain open but tied the walls together.
Most of the windows, rooflights and doors were repaired in-situ to protect their delicate construction. A number of the building materials and fittings used commonly in the 1960’s are now obviously obsolete, so the contractor and we had great fun sourcing these from the depths of old builders’ yards or, more often than not, we got fittings made up by specialist craftsmen. For example, the four additional metal fluorescent light canopies needed for the top studio, which Thorne laughingly admitted they’d stopped manufacturing some 40 years previously, were made up by the specialist metalworker to match exactly the two canopies we still had.
Once the building works had been completed, The Henry Moore Foundation restored the interiors, including the bright coloured carpets and curtains, and meticulously re-fitted the fantastic interiors, which are crammed with original furniture, fittings, objects, books and artworks, much of which has kindly been loaned by The Henry Moore Family Collection.
The gardens surrounding the house, which had been design by Henry’s wife Irene in an architectural way to compliment the sculptures, were also carefully restored by Yvonne Innes to Irene’s original design.
The careful restoration of Hoglands, the Top/Etching Studio, garden and original interiors, not only gives the visitor a tour of this conserved medieval Hall House and a rich and accurate insight into a 1960’s household and lifestyle, but also provides a rare opportunity to experience the work environment and life of this immensely significant Artist and his work within a domestic context.
Website: http://www.henry-moore-fdn.co.uk/
Book: Hoglands: Mitchinson, David, The Home of Henry and Irena Moore, Lund Humphries, 2007
Radio 4: Women’s hour, 6th June 2007
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/womanshour/03/2007_23_wed.shtml
A Tour of Hoglands with Mary Moore sharing her memories of the house.
Guardian article: At home with Moore.
