Stable Block With Attached Railings And Coach House Approximately 100 Metres North East Of Sarsden House

Stable Block with Attached Coach House, Sarsden

This stable block and coach house stands approximately 100 metres north-east of Sarsden House. Built in the mid-18th century with minor later additions, it is constructed of roughly coursed limestone rubble with ashlar dressings to key features. The roof is of graded slate, hipped to the coach house section.

The building forms a U-plan around a courtyard. The east range is one storey with an attic, featuring a pedimented break to the centre with quoin strips and a narrow round-headed arch with projecting imposts and keystone. Two multi-paned casements flank each side of a boarded door with rectangular overlight. Gabled dormers sit directly above the windows, and an octagonal round-arched wooden cupola with stuccoed base and lead cap, topped by a weathervane, crowns the pediment. A ridge stack sits to the far right.

The north range has a gable with a blind two-bay segmental-headed arcade featuring projecting keystones and inset round-arched windows with multi-paned casements. The continuation to the right has three boarded doors with rectangular overlights alternating with three multi-paned windows. A gabled hatch with boarded double door sits above the second window from the left, with gabled dormers to left and far right. An ashlar ridge stack with dripstone and moulded capping sits to the left, with a circular pointed louvre to the right.

The south range is similar to the north, though several windows are blind and the two-bay arcade has no window to the right bay. A gabled hoist projection mirrors the gabled hatch on the north side.

Spear-shaped wrought-iron railings with scroll-work detail sit on a low stone wall, attached to the west ends of the north and south ranges and enclosing the courtyard. The coach house to the rear has six elliptical carriage arches, four with full-height boarded double doors. The centre two occupy a slightly projecting pedimented break with plain cornice and blind oculus.

The interior features large loose boxes with iron grilles and ball finials, possibly original hay racks and troughs, and decorative arch-bracing to the ceiling. The attic has wide floorboards and a double butt-purlin roof with light collars. The building is said to have accommodated stabling for 12 horses.

Behind the open bays of the coach house, to the right of its central spine wall, are wall paintings executed during the Second World War. Using a limited palette of principally brown and pink for figures and bright blue for backgrounds, the work appears unfinished. The left wall bears a seated female nude with sketched blue mountain background. The left side of the rear wall features a reclining female figure; the right side shows a crawling male figure with text reading "LEO APONTE ON RECONNAISSANCE" and "LOOKS LIKE A FIVE POUNDER TO ME". The left side of the right-hand wall shows another reclining female nude with mountains, and to the right a standing female nude with a Sherman tank carrying a triangle badge and number 6 behind her.

The stable block predates the late 18th-century improvements at Sarsden, appearing on estate maps dated 1788 and 1795, and in both the 'before' and 'after' views in Humphry Repton's Red Book presented to John Langston in March 1796.

The wall paintings, although possibly begun by British troops, were largely executed by men of the HQ Company, Combat Command B of the American 3rd Army's 6th Armoured Division, which arrived at Sarsden in February 1944. The triangle and number 6 on the depiction of a Sherman tank indicate this American unit. Locally it is believed the painter was Italian, with Leo Aponte's name suggesting he was an Italian American. British soldiers billeted here are believed to have later participated in the D-Day landings, while the American troops, who departed in July 1944, are known to have subsequently been involved in the Battle of the Bulge, the relief of Bastogne, and the liberation of Buchenwald.