1-4 Brook Cottages

Two pairs of estate cottages, built between the 1850s and 1880s on the Tortworth Estate for the Earl of Ducie, are constructed in a Tudor Gothic style. The cottages were possibly designed by Foster and Wood of Bristol. They are built of local stone rubble with freestone dressings, with plain tile roofs featuring decorative ridge details and brick stacks.

Each pair of cottages is laid out as a mirror image. Each pair has two principal rooms on the front and back, and a small scullery/utility room behind the front entrance. Overall, each pair has four bays and one and a half storeys. They share central diamond-set ridge stacks and a deep, hipped roof over the two inner bays; the outer bays are slightly set back with lower, half-hipped roofs. Projecting gabled porches have uprights with moulded braces rising from a dwarf wall, with scissor bracing, a central spinial and moulded pendant detail to the roof. A buttress with two offsets marks the centre of the shared elevation. The inner bays have a window on both the ground and first floors. The ground-floor window is stone mullioned and transomed with six lights, while the first-floor window is two-light stone mullioned. All original window glazing has been replaced with double-glazed units within the original stone surrounds. The returns also have windows to the ground and first floors—a small, square single light on the ground floor, and a two-light stone mullioned window within the half-hipped gable. The return wall of number 4 has been rendered.

The projecting rear wings of each cottage are half-hipped, with a central entrance door (number 4’s door is a uPVC replacement) and a two-light double-glazed uPVC casement window in segmental-arched openings on both the ground and first floors. Numbers 3, 1, and 2 each have a small extension to the rear: number 3 has a late 20th/early 21st century single-storey conservatory, and numbers 1 and 2 each have a small lean-to addition in the same position.

The interiors feature some four-panelled doors, splayed window openings, moulded architraves and skirting boards. Number 4 has a wood-burning stove in the fireplace of the main ground-floor room, which has no fire surround. The window reveal extends downwards to form a window seat. The later rear kitchens and bathrooms have minimal detailing. A winding staircase lit by a small fixed light window leads to a small first-floor landing. Doorways to the bedrooms are set diagonally. Some exposed roof timbers are present, but they are unchamfered, and lack stop-chamfered spine beams with run-out stops.