Overstrand Hall is a country house in

Overstrand Overstrand is a village (population 1,030) on the north coast of Norfolk in England, two miles east of Cromer. It was once a modest fishing station, with all or part of the fishing station being known as Beck Hythe. In the latter part of the 19t ...

Norfolk Norfolk () is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in East Anglia in England. It borders Lincolnshire to the north-west, Cambridgeshire to the west and south-west, and Suffolk to the south. Its northern and eastern boundaries are the Nort ...

, England, designed by Edwin Lutyens for

Charles William Mills, 2nd Baron Hillingdon Charles William Mills, 2nd Baron Hillingdon (26 January 1855 – 6 April 1919) was a British banker and Conservative politician who sat in the House of Commons from 1885 to 1892, speaking once, in 1889. Mills was eldest son of Charles Mills, 1st ...

, a partner in Glyn, Mills & Co. Bank. It was built between 1899 and 1901 and is

Grade II listed In the United Kingdom, a listed building or listed structure is one that has been placed on one of the four statutory lists maintained by Historic England in England, Historic Environment Scotland in Scotland, in Wales, and the Northern Ir ...

as of 27 September 1972. The Mills family used Overstrand as a weekend residence, preferring their homes

Hillingdon Court Hillingdon Court is a Grade II listed mansion in Hillingdon, within the London Borough of Hillingdon. Originally built in 1858 as the family home of the Mills family, the mansion has formed part of the ACS Hillingdon International School since 19 ...

and

Dorton House Dorton House, formerly known as Wildernesse, is a Grade II listed Georgian mansion house in Seal, Kent, near Sevenoaks; until 2013 it was used as the headquarters for the Royal London Society for the Blind (RLSB) and as housing for the blind an ...

as their main residences.

Nicholas Pevsner Sir Nikolaus Bernhard Leon Pevsner (30 January 1902 – 18 August 1983) was a German-British art historian and architectural historian best known for his monumental 46-volume series of county-by-county guides, '' The Buildings of England'' ( ...

described Overstrand as "one of (Lutyens's) most remarkable buildings, at the time when he had reached maturity but still believed to the full in his own inventiveness." The house is of a complex courtyard plan, with a varied range of materials, "stone with half-timbering, flint with brick and tile," and styles, "Jacobean with classical, vernacular with Italianate." ''Burke's and Savills Guide to Country Houses: East Anglia'' describes the hall as "an important early work by Lutyens, his first large work outside the

Home Counties The home counties are the counties of England that surround London. The counties are not precisely defined but Buckinghamshire and Surrey are usually included in definitions and Berkshire, Essex, Hertfordshire and Kent are also often inclu ...

." During the

First World War World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fig ...

, the hall was used as a military hospital and the Mills family sold the house for use as a convalescent home in 1932. Currently (2018), the hall is home to Kingswood residential activity centre.

Kingswood activity centre

Overstrand Hall has been a Kingswood residential activity centre since 1999, catering for 7–17 year olds.

Notes

References

* * {{cite book , last1 = Kenworthy-Browne , first1 = John , last2 = Reid , first2 = Peter , last3 = Sayer , first3 = Michael , last4 = Watkin , first4 = David , year = 1981 , title = Volume III - East Anglia , series = Burke and Savill's Guide to Country Houses , publisher =

Burke's Peerage Burke's Peerage Limited is a British genealogical publisher founded in 1826, when the Irish genealogist John Burke began releasing books devoted to the ancestry and heraldry of the peerage, baronetage, knightage and landed gentry of Great ...

, isbn = 9780850110357 , url = https://books.google.com/books?id=bgoNAQAAIAAJ&q=Burke+and+Savill's+Guide+to+Country+Houses+Volume+III+-+East+Anglia Country houses in Norfolk Grade II listed buildings in Norfolk North Norfolk Works of Edwin Lutyens in England