Listed Building record MDR15151 - Chiverton House, Chesterfield Road, Dronfield

Large, 3-storey stone built house with stone slate roof. Date stone of 1712 over the door. Continuous drip moulds and gable windows to centre roof. Two gate posts of stone and a later cast iron small screen across front of building. Tower-like structures at either end date from 1712. (1) Vernacular house dated to 1712. (2) This house can be seen from the gateway and is the third property on the site. Richard Hall built the present one around 1700, with a date stone over the kitchen door of 1712, and the initials of John Brown and his wife. It is in transitional style with 17th century gables and mullioned windows, but with a symmetrical Renaissance frontage. The towers on either side are thought to have been powder rooms off the main bedrooms where wigs were dressed. The Smith Milnes family of Dunston Hall occupied the house, known then as Dam Flat House from 1820 to 1870 when the Rhodes family took up residence and renamed it Chiverton after a property in Cornwall connected with tin mining. They were involved in coal mining and metalworking and Geoffrey, the last member of the Rhodes family to live there, had a small brass foundry in one of the outbuildings, where he produced household items such as fire irons. The house had been little altered both internally and externally since it was built. The present owners have restored the house. (3)