Cottage, Stables And Coach House South Of Glendon

Cottage, Stables and Coach House South of Glendon, Corfe Mullen

This is a former stable complex built in the early 19th century and associated with Glendon, a large early 19th-century house to the north. The complex comprises a stable building, coach house, and cottage arranged around a roughly square courtyard.

All buildings are constructed of brick with slate roofs and rendered chimneystacks. Most fenestration consists of sash windows with glazing bars, though some windows are 20th-century replacements.

The courtyard is defined on the east side by the stable building and cottage, with the former coach house to the north and a boundary wall to the west. A block of garages was added along part of the west side in the mid or late 20th century, and the southern boundary wall was removed at the same time. Originally access was through a gated entrance on the east side; a second vehicular access was later created to the south of the stable building.

The stable building is a two-storey Neo-classical structure with a low hipped roof of slate and wide eaves, topped with a weather vane. Originally roughly square in plan, its south-west corner was rebuilt at an angle after 1934 to create a new courtyard entrance, probably to improve access for motor vehicles. The roadside (east) elevation has two blind lunette windows to the ground floor that appear never to have been glazed, and a taking-in door above. There is a possible blocked doorway to the ground floor right. The courtyard (west) elevation has a round-headed window with a fanlight to the upper section and a small taking-in door above. Access to the interior is via a doorway in the north wall with a timber door and shallow projecting canopy.

The former coach house is a single-storey, two-bay building with a slate roof hipped at its west end and a central rendered ridge stack. The principal (south) elevation has been altered: the east end was extended slightly to connect to the adjacent cottage for domestic use. The two original bay entrances were modified, with the western one rebuilt in brick as a single entrance with timber door, and the eastern bay now having sliding glass doors. The west gable wall and rear elevation retain finely detailed early 19th-century lunette windows.

The cottage fronts onto the roadside as a symmetrical two-storey composition in matching materials—rendered brick walls with end gable chimneystacks. The front elevation has a central panelled door with a three/six sash window to either side at ground floor, and two further sash windows at first floor. The rear elevation has fenestration of different dates. In the late 1930s, when the narrow gap between the rear of the cottage and the east end of the coach house was infilled, a doorway was replaced with a casement window and a new doorway inserted slightly to the north to provide direct access between the two buildings. Both gable walls have small attic windows.

Between the stable building and cottage is a gated carriage entrance with a pair of square brick gate piers with stone caps and ball finials; the timber gates are believed to be later additions. A single-storey garage block on the west side of the courtyard is not of special interest.

The interior of the stable building has lost its stalls but retains a brick floor, several upright posts that probably secured stall partitions, and a ladder stair providing access to the floor above. The first floor, used for storage and possibly groom accommodation, is open to the roof with king post, struts and tie beams visible. The coach house has been converted to domestic use with a false ceiling inserted to both bays; the southern bay retains a corner fireplace with tiled surround. The cottage has undergone internal refurbishment since the late 1930s; fireplaces and handrail to the stairs have been replaced, but it retains its plan form and some 19th-century doors and other joinery.

Glendon was built in the early 19th century, probably for a merchant involved in the Newfoundland fur trade. From at least 1878 the house was owned by Major General Powlett Lane, a Justice of the Peace and Deputy Lieutenant for Dorset following his retirement from the army, and by Sir Claude and Lady Frances Morrison-Bell from 1936. The stable complex to the south appears stylistically to date from the same early 19th-century period.