Swiss Cottage

Swiss Cottage is a disused building located in Oteley, constructed between 1826 and 1842 for Charles Kynaston Mainwaring. The cottage features horizontal split-log construction on a rock-faced rusticated plinth for the main range, while the gabled range is built with regularly coursed and dressed red sandstone blocks. It has a fishscale slate roof adorned with carved woodwork along the wide spreading verges and eaves, including carved pendants and finials. The structure has a basic L-plan with a porch that projects to the north and is a single storey high.

On the south side, there is a gable to the right with a Tudor arch leading to a passage that goes through to the north side. The north side features an open gabled timber porch to the left, which has carved decorative open-work panels on the sides and ornamental half-glazed doors with decorative tracery. To the right, there is a 4-light leaded window supported on carved wooden brackets, with a similar window on the right gable end. A rusticated stone axial stack is located behind the ridge to the right.

Inside, the cottage retains traces of its original decorative scheme, including an elaborately decorated frieze with fleur-de-lys decoration below, a guilloche pattern on the door, an exposed rafter roof, and a tile floor. Charles Kynaston Mainwaring, who was an enthusiastic amateur gardener and traveled extensively in Europe, is believed to have been instrumental in designing the garden at Oteley and its features. His house, Oteley Park, built in an Elizabethan style on the site of an earlier building between 1826 and 1830 and extended in 1842, was demolished around 1960.