Grittleton Stables

Grittleton Stables is an extensive complex of stables, coach-house and grooms' lodgings dating to around 1835, designed by James Thomson for Joseph Neeld of Grittleton. The buildings are constructed in squared rubble stone with raised ashlar dressings and low-pitched slate eaves roofs, predominantly one-and-a-half storeys in height.

The complex is organized as a sequence of enclosed or partially enclosed courtyards running west to east. The first, main court features a barn on its west side with a half-hipped roof, raised ashlar plinth, quoins and eaves band. A low link on the north side has an open pedimental gable over the carriageway serving as the main entry, with doors opening north and south. This link connects to a long north stable range, half-hipped with six horizontal windows and a door in the second bay from each end. The east side has a matching open pedimental gable over a carriageway, flanked by granary buildings raised on staddlestones, which feature roundels to their side walls and doors opening into the carriageway. To the right stands a long one-and-a-half storey range with a hipped roof and ridge stacks, containing three ground floor doors and two horizontal stable windows, with one central shallow-gabled loading door. A short link connects this to the south range, the former grooms' lodgings, which is one-and-a-half storeys with a gable to the right and end stacks. The windows are small-paned in raised plain surrounds. The gable end has one upper window and one window each side of a centre door, while the range to the left has two upper windows in dormer gables and three below. To the right is a former coach-house or garage addition with red brick piers and two full-height openings, with a hipped roof to the west.

In the centre of the court stands a remarkable column-dovecote—a large circular shaft supporting a two-stage painted timber octagonal dovecote on top.

To the east of the main court, the carriageway continues into a narrow space with a north screen-wall incorporating a re-used bolection-moulded doorway. Between two matching stable buildings opposed across the carriageway, each has a hipped roof, front ground floor door and a first-floor arched-headed loading door in a pedimental dormer-gable. Both have a raised plinth, quoins, eaves band and surrounds, and side-wall raised bands incorporating a tripartite window flanked by roundels. The south stable has a south end addition, while the north stable has a long stable range attached to its east, with doors at each end and four horizontal stable windows between.

This last range faces across a court at a plain, large six-bay coach house with ashlar framing to the end openings, all openings plain and square-headed, with a gabled roof and end-wall roundels.

To the east, linked to the coach house, is the principal building of the complex: a large two-storey T-plan range with a tall timber-boarded square clock turret on the centre ridge, roof hipped to west and east and gabled to the north wing. The north end has ground floor ashlar piers with roundel motifs above (now infilled but originally designed as two coach entries), with a window above in a raised plain surround. The main range on each side features a north front three-bay single storey verandah, flat-roofed on three unfluted Greek Doric ashlar columns, with two-window ranges each side, the upper windows in eaves-breaking shallow-gabled dormers. The west end has a shallow-gabled centrepiece breaking the eaves, over a giant moulded round arch incorporating lower and upper doors, with ground floor arched lights each side. The east end has a similar arch to the ground floor only, with arched lights each side and a window above. The east and west angles are clasped at ground floor by massive circular piers with heavy moulded caps.

All stable ranges retain original timber and cast-iron stable fittings. Designs for the stables dating to around 1835 are held in the Courtauld Institute, London.