Homewood, Knebworth

Homewood is an Arts and Crafts style country house in Knebworth, Hertfordshire, England. Designed and built by architect Edwin Lutyens around 1900–3, using a mixture of vernacular and Neo-Georgian architecture, it is a Grade II* listed building. The house was one of Lutyens' first experiments in the addition of classical features to his previously vernacular style, and the introduction of symmetry into his plans. The gardens, also designed by Lutyens, are Grade II listed in the National Register of Historic Parks and Gardens.

Lutyens designed the house for his mother-in-law, Edith Bulwer-Lytton, the dowager countess of Lytton, and her daughter, the suffragette Constance Lytton. It was built at the southern end of Park Wood on the Lyttons' Knebworth estate, about 1 kilometre (0.62 miles) southeast of Knebworth House, using whitewashed brick, weatherboarding and plain tiles. Construction was carried out by the estate builders, to a tight budget. Sources differ on the dates, ranging from 1900, to 1903.

The house's square plan has been compared to Philip Webb's earlier design for Joldwynds, in Surrey. The northwest, entrance front with its three gables is very like that of Joldwynds. The southwest, side elevation has only two gables, however. The southeast, garden front differs radically from Webb. The roof is cut away in the centre to reveal a two-storey, classical facade with Ionic pilasters, creating the appearance of an embedded villa, emerging from the vernacular covering of tiled roofs and elm weatherboarding, which elsewhere around the house come down to the tops of the ground floor windows. The garden front is flanked by two loggias facing each other across a terrace. Other classical touches, on the house's entrance front, include a central, rusticated porch, which has been called Mannerist, and two flanking small pavilions with rusticated piers. The western pavilion contained a darkroom, and the northern one a larder and scullery. There is a small extension on the northeast, service side of the house.

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