Kemble House, gatepiers, boundary walls, outbuildings and garden features

Kemble House is a large, detached house originally dating from the 17th century, probably built for Henry Poole (1564-1632). It was much altered and enlarged in the mid-19th century for the Gordon family by the architect R W Billings (1813-74), and then restored and partly remodelled in the mid-20th century. The property includes gatepiers and boundary walls, outbuildings and garden features.

Materials

The house is built of local oolitic limestone, coursed or randomly coursed, under Cotswold stone slate roofs.

Plan

The house has a double-depth plan to the main range, which runs east-west with two equal cross wings extending southwards. Attached along the northern side is a long, single-depth range which extends beyond the main block to both east and west.

Exterior

The house is in typical Cotswold style, of two storeys and attic, except for the eastern end of the north range which is of two storeys only. The ranges are gabled with quoins, raised coped verges, and ball finials. The stacks are diagonally-set, in ashlar, with moulded cornices. The windows are cross windows or mullioned and transomed, all with distinctive lozenge-patterned leaded glazing under hood moulds; those to the east side are continuous on each floor. The windows are generally two lights to the first floor and attic, and four lights to the ground floor. The house has cast-iron rainwater goods.

The current entrance front is to the west side. The main range has two gabled bays, each with a gable stack. The west end of the north wing has a small, three-light oriel on its south side, with a small, two-light gabled dormer with kneelers above. The stone stack immediately to the right of the oriel has large, paired cylindrical flues with an offset. The entrance is via a single-storey corner porch in the north-west angle, with a canted corner and a wide doorway under a cusped, arched opening. The western gable end of the now-truncated northern range has a ground-floor doorway to the left, with a studded and part-glazed door, a two-light window to the right, and a three-light window to the first floor.

The south front has two double-canted, two-storey bay windows, one to each gable, that to the left with a gable stack. The east side has paired gables and a central entrance door, representing the former cross-passage. The north wing has two- and three-light stone mullioned windows with a square hoodmould on its south side, and a carved plaque with a cipher. The eastern end has an elaborate, projecting crowstepped gable with a flat top, with diagonal stepped buttresses, a four-light stone mullioned and transomed window on the first floor, and a ground floor former entrance, with its moulded archway now blocked and a two-light stone mullioned window inserted. Three half-elliptical stone steps up to the former entrance remain in situ.

The north elevation was significantly altered in the mid-20th century. The scattered fenestration was reordered to allow the creation of a large, external stair with a solid, ashlar balustrade to the first-floor flat, which has a plain-glazed, 20th-century external door with overdoor and margin glazing. A similar door is set in the ground-floor porch, which has a mid-20th-century gable above.

Interior

The principal ground-floor rooms have various plaster ceilings in geometric designs, deeply-moulded cornices, stone fire surrounds of various designs and four-centred-arched doorways. The floors are parquet of varying designs.

The entrance hall has a dentil cornice and geometric patterned ceiling, which continue above a door-height wall with geometric glazed partition above into the adjacent dining room to the east. This room has 19th-century panelling with upper linenfold panels, circular bosses in the toprail between the panels, and an integral overmantel with moulded panels. The fire surround is Tudor in style, with a four-centred-arched opening, and run-outs with elaborate stops.

To the south, the two wings each have a single large room with a bay window. The library ceiling is divided into three compartments, with multiple mouldings probably disguising the formerly exposed 17th-century ceiling beams. The stone fireplace has a Carnarvon-arched opening; the mantel shelf is carried on heavy brackets with escutcheons below, and reeding to the brackets and roll moulding under the shelf. The drawing room has a similarly compartmentalised ceiling with very deep cornice, Gothic panels to the flat surfaces of the beams, and fishscale plasterwork on the surface of the ceiling. The stone fireplace is a late-20th-century replacement, in a Gothic style.

From the entrance hall, a pair of pointed arched openings give access through the very thick, formerly external wall to the north into the stair hall in the northern wing. The stair hall has 19th-century panelling, with two square panels below the height of the chair rail, and single panels rising from there to the moulded cornice. The room is dominated by the large, open-well stair, which has square-section newels with moulded caps and carved panels to the visible faces, between which runs a continuous, pierced timber balustrade of strapwork design. The upper newels form ceiling pendants with flattened ball finials. The undersides of the staircase and the ceilings have overall interlaced Gothic plasterwork decoration with relatively shallow moulded members.

To the east of the hall, the kitchen has entirely late 20th-century finishes, and does not retain earlier features apart from its windows. To the west of the stair hall is the study, beyond which the former service rooms were demolished in the 1950s. This room has plainer mouldings and a modest fireplace.

The stair rises from the ground floor to the attic, where the balustrade continues to create a galleried landing. The walls of the stair are lined with integral, bolection-moulded frames. The stairwell is top lit by a large, compartmental roof light, divided into square fields by heavy-section mouldings with elaborate pendant finials at their intersections; the fields are glazed with blue and white etched glass in geometric patterns. Doors off the stairwell are all four-centred arched like those to the ground floor.

The first-floor principal rooms are in the earlier part of the house. They have modest moulded cornices and six-panelled doors. No fireplaces survive. The eastern end of the first floor of the northern range, above the kitchen, comprises a flat created in the mid-20th century, which can be accessed internally from a door in the attic. The first floor rooms to the western end have modest mouldings and doors. The attic, in the western end of this range, has partly-visible roof trusses and a modest stone fireplace of the 19th century. The attic rooms in the earlier part of the house, above the principal rooms, have mouldings disguising the visible elements of the roof structure.

There are extensive, stone-lined cellars with flagstone floors and various subdivisions, one part vaulted with chamfered stone uprights.

Subsidiary Features

The house is approached from Limes Road via a wide entrance gateway, with large, square-section ashlar piers, moulded caps and ball finials; to either side is a short, straight stretch of flanking wall in ashlar, slightly lower than the piers, with a matching, moulded coping. Curving away from the flanking walls on either side are dry-stone rubble boundary walls, which describe the extent of the property to the roadside.

In the forecourt to the house stand the garages, converted from an outbuilding in the 1950s. The building, of neatly squared and coursed stone, is in three ranges: a central, two-storey, five-window range, with gable end stacks and lozenge-shaped leading to match the house, and a projecting, flat-roofed extension to the front housing two garage doors. The west gable has two-light mullioned window with diamond leaded glazing. The rear has similar windows with diamond chamfered mullions, those to the ground floor with hood moulds. The lower section to the east has a three-light mullioned and transomed window to the gable end, and double garage doors to the south. The lower range to the east has a narrow doorway and window to the right. To the right of the garages range extends a boundary wall, of squared and coursed stone, with a stone coping. It includes an arched opening into the adjacent churchyard, aligned on the doorway in the south porch of the church.

The gardens, which extend south of the house and its forecourt, include a number of features. The eastern and southern boundaries are described by runs of low, stone garden walls, of short, moulded square-section piers with pierced balustrading between. In the eastern wall, a viewing area is created by a bowing-out of the walls, vase balusters giving way to curving, ashlar walls with moulded capping, flanking a section of pierced balustrading which likely replaces an earlier clairvoyée arrangement. An axial route direct from the south front of the house runs through the length of the garden via two sets of stone steps with moulded treads to an elaborate southern gateway to the parkland beyond: the balustraded wall returns a short distance to form the flanks of a final set of stone steps, marked by fat, square-section piers with moulded caps and elaborate finials, of pierced balls with pinnacles.

A sundial stands on the same axis a short distance from the house, moved to this location from a point further to the east around the turn of the 20th century.

The western boundary is delineated by a dry-stone rubble wall, which also forms one side of the walled garden; this is a narrow rectangle orientated north-south, bounded at its northern edge by a cottage possibly of the 18th century, of squared and coursed rubble stone with a Cotswold stone slate roof. The cottage is of three wide bays, two storey with a rear outshut, and small, square and rectangular window openings with timber casements. The rear catslide has two hipped and gabled dormers. There is evidence of a blocked doorway in the eastern gable end. The eastern and southern walls of the garden are a mix of rubble stone construction and roughly squared and coursed stone. The southern end is now given over to a tennis court, the northern end remaining in use as a walled garden, accessed via a segmental-arched opening from the formal gardens. The walled garden is terraced, with stone flags and steps between the beds, and a raised, central circular pond, dating from the 20th century.

To the south-west of the house is a stone seat, in limestone ashlar; the high, segmental-arched parapet steps down at either side to accommodate a stout ball finial; the uprights below have large, scrolling shoulders, and each has an unglazed, narrow window opening with moulded entablature above. The main opening is segmental arched, and it and the flanking openings have carved bead moulding. The interior is in tightly-jointed squared and coursed dressed stone, with a pitched roof behind the raised parapet.