Page 18 - Oundle Life August 2021

Wold with a new larger house so that he could settle and conserve this rural idyll. And so, in 1900 Lord Rothschild commissioned architect William Huckvale to rethink the whole estate.
Little is known about Huckvale who worked mainly for the Rothschilds on the Tring Park Estate, and at the Rothschild Bank
in the City of London. However, the
quality of Huckvale’s work is beyond
doubt with 42 listed buildings to his
name, including 13 in Tring and 29
here on the Ashton Estate where he
designed a new mansion, a model farm,
and an entire complement of estate
buildings including: the Steward’s house, stables and gardeners’ accommodation, a building to house a fire engine, a petrol store, kennels (now derelict) and a dog hospital.
To complete Huckvale’s master plan, the cottages in Ashton village were rebuilt in his trademark Tudor style to create the model village we know today. Each cottage was designed to include its own bath house and was placed in a large garden planted with
lilac, laburnum and fruit trees to encourage
and nourish wildlife. High quality design and workmanship are consistent themes throughout the estate, where vernacular building traditions are all faithfully referenced. Simple working buildings such as cart hovels, wash houses and
potting sheds were also consciously afforded the same care as the dwellings, farmsteads, and garden structures.
For me the crowning glory in this avant-garde community was the central provision of both running filtered water and electricity to all properties. In doing so, in 1900 the Rothschilds
became the first landowners in the country to provide their tenants with such luxuries. Better still, the electricity was sustainably generated by water turbines housed in an old mill below the village on the River Nene. The water was pumped from there to a high-water tower
on the estate from which gravity fed filtered water to all estate buildings. Astonishingly the electricity was also supplied underground to maintain the period character and eliminate the
. . . the quality of Huckvale’s work is beyond doubt
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