Hill Hall: home of a Tudor intellectual

Since 1952, Hill Hall, at Theydon Mount, in Essex, had been a women’s open prison whose unwilling guests included Christine Keeler. To architectural historians, this was indeed a fall from grace for an exceptional building that Nikolaus Pevsner, writing in the Architectural Review in 1955, hailed as one of the first classical Renaissance houses to be built in England. All photos (unless stated): English Heritage/ Wessex Archaeology/Society of Antiquaries of London Recognition of its architectural interest undoubtedly persuaded the Prison Commissioners not to demolish what survived of the property after a devastating fire in 1969 swept through the building, spreading rapidly round the