Gauge House

Gauge House is a late 19th-century building located in Rickford, Blagdon. It features a wooden raft supported by cast iron stanchions over a brook. The structure is made of rockfaced coursed red sandstone with green sandstone dressings set on a limestone plinth. It has a timber frame outer skin on brick with roughcast infill and a plain tile roof, designed in a Swiss chalet style. The building is square in plan with a pyramidal roof and an open apex turret topped with a weathervane. Each face has window and door openings that develop into gabled dormers, with plank doors that have fine ironwork hinges. There is a retaining wall along the roadside made of rockfaced squared sandstone with ashlar coping, piers, and wrought iron railings. The Gauge House makes an important visual contribution to the streetscape alongside the Masonic Lodge and Mill House.