Agents House Sarsden Estate

This is an early 19th-century house, likely incorporating elements of an earlier building, with later additions and alterations. The house is constructed of roughly coursed limestone rubble with stone slate roofs. It has a double-depth plan. It is two storeys and has an attic.

The road-facing side has three glazing bar sash windows to the left and a tripartite sash to the right on the first floor, all with wedged voussoirs. The ground floor features tripartite sashes to the left and right, also with similar voussoirs, and two glazing bar sashes roughly centered, positioned where a doorway was previously infilled, with a plain stone surround. Three gabled dormers are in the middle of the roof slope. Integral end stacks have moulded dripstones and capping; the stack on the right was rebuilt in the 20th century. A cellar is located to the left, lit by a two-light ovolo-moulded mullion window.

A low, L-shaped service range from the 19th century is attached to the right, where it connects with a parallel rear range. The service range's former entrance front, now displaced by a shift in the course of the road, is arranged in three bays, with glazing bar sashes in plain stone surrounds. A central entrance has a six-panel door (with the upper panels now glazed), paired with a wreathed and ramped fanlight, sheltered by a 19th-century flat-roofed wooden porch featuring curved braces and trefoils to the spandrels. Three gabled dormers mirror those on the road side. This service range has integral end stacks with moulded dripstones and capping.

During a resurvey in August 1987, access to the interior was restricted, but the rear range was noted to contain an early 19th-century dog-leg staircase with stick balusters to an open string, a wreathed and ramped handrail, and a circular bottom newel. Panelled window shutters are also present.

Local historical research suggests the building may have been the “staring house” proposed by Humphry Repton in his Red Book (around 1796) for John Langston, the owner of Sarsden House. However, the Red Book depicts a building with a hipped roof, whereas this building has a double-span gabled roof, which may represent a 19th-century remodel. Furthermore, its location is too far west to match the depiction in the Red Book, which showed it adjacent to the stables of Sarsden House. Estate maps from 1788 and 1795 show buildings on this site and another near the stables, marked as a Farmhouse and The Pigeon House. It is now thought that The Pigeon House, which has since been demolished, was more likely the “staring house” referenced by Repton.