Diamond Cottage

The land on which the cottage stands is part of an estate purchased by John Scandrett Harford, a banker, for £13,000 in 1789. Harford had a substantial house built and asked the landscape architect Humphry Repton to lay out the grounds. Repton became a partner of John Nash, whom Harford commissioned to design a group of cottages as homes for his retired servants. Nash created sketches of the cottages, which George Repton built.[1] The cottages surround an open green.[2] Each cottage faces the green and has a separate back garden.[3] They were described by Pevsner as "...the nec plus ultra of picturesque layout and design".[2]

When built, the cottages would have been set in open country. Since then the group of cottages has been surrounded by a high wall, which hides the modern housing around them.[3] The hamlet became a National Trust property in 1943.[1] Diamond Cottage was made a listed building, grade I: buildings of exceptional interest, on 8 January 1959.[2] It is listed as 901-1/20/1341, no. 2 Blaise Hamlet, Diamond Cottage on Hallen Road.[4] The exterior has been carefully restored, while the interior has been modernised and is still occupied.[1] The cottage is rented by the National Trust.[3]

The picturesque style Diamond Cottage was built in 1812.[2] It is faced with random rubble. The hipped roof is tiled in stone, and has two diagonally-set brick chimney stacks to the rear. On two sides there is a pent roof over a deep coved eave, with a leaded lattice casement in each wall. The cottage is entered from the left through a plank door in a porch with a pitched roof.[2] Before renovation it had a kitchen, sitting room, scullery and outside lavatory.[3] The attic with a half dormer is reached by a dogleg stairway. The cottage interior was modernised around 1975.[2]