Broadleas

Broadleas is a house built around 1830-1840, with extensions added in a matching style around 1920-1930. It is constructed of ashlar stone and features a low-pitched slate roof with ashlar stacks. The building is two stories tall and originally had three-window fronts on three sides, but the south side was extended to five windows during the 1920-1930 alterations. The roof has brackets supporting the boarded eaves soffit.

The entrance front includes two front stacks, a slightly recessed central bay, and angle strips. On the first floor, there are three 16-pane sash windows with shutters. The ground floor features blank elliptical arched recesses that frame niches with terracotta statues, flanked by blank rectangular panels. The central entrance has a four-panel door with sidelights and a cornice supported by corbels, all set within a heavy ashlar corniced porch. The porch has a Venetian tripartite front opening and arched side openings, with unmoulded details and corbel-type consoles under the impost band at the heads of the door and sidelights.

The original north and south ends of the house had a recessed central bay, three upper sash windows, and a ground floor central sash window with a similar sash in an elliptical arched recess to one side, along with a large canted bay with a parapet on the other side, all windows equipped with shutters. On the south garden front, two additional bays were added in a mirror image to create a five-window front, with the center and ends projected and canted bays on the ground floor of the end bays. There are various three and four-storey brick service ranges located in the northeast angle of the property.

Broadleas is believed to have been built around 1832-1834 for a builder from Devizes. From the 1860s, it was owned by the Ewart family. William Ewart, a Member of Parliament from 1798 to 1869, who was a promoter of the Free Libraries Act in 1850 and advocated for the abolition of hanging in chains in 1834 and the death penalty for cattle theft in 1837, lived and died here.