Listed Building: KNOWLEHILL, HOUSE, TEA ROOM AND OTHER BUILDINGS, INCLUDING UNDERGROUND CAVES (1096436)

House, attached walls and tea room, now semi-derelict. C17, late C18 and early C19. Red brick and timber framing, plain tile roof with brick gable stacks. One and two storeys. House to west with walls and ancillary buildings including a tea room, enclosing a courtyard to the east. House is built against the hillside. Single storey to west has central C19 doorway with panelled door and bracketed hood. Flanked on each side by 2-light casement windows. Two storey east elevation has exposed boxed framing in large irregular vertical panels, with brick infill. The ground floor has from left to right, a doorway, two windows, a doorway and a window, all under timber lintels. Four 2-light casements above. The east side of the courtyard has a range of derelict buildings. Doorway with wedge brick lintel. The range to the left has mostly collapsed. To the right is a late C18 tea room, which has a semi-circular projection to south with ogee doorway, flanked by ogee windows. West elevation has further ogee windows. The lower parts of the walls are of large sandstone blocks. Four semi-circular headed windows. The interior of the tea room has an ogee door and doorway, and the remains of a fluted cornice. In the undercroft is a four-centred arched fireplace. To the north east are various fragments of what appears to have been a late C18 pleasure garden. A terrace with concave curved ashlar wall with half-domed statue niches and below, a passage cut into the rock, to two circular chambers lined with small niches. Knowle Hill is the site of the old home of the Burdett family before their move to Foremark. The site appears to have been made in the late C18 into a pleasure garden, with terracing down the dramatically precipitous side of the valley. The underground caves are somewhat reminiscent of the caves of West Wycombe Park, Buckinghamshire. Listing NGR: SK3516725672