Barnwood Court

Barnwood Court, Nos 29 and 29A Barnwood Avenue, Gloucester

Manor house, later vicarage, now house divided into two dwellings. Built around 1600, with substantial alterations and additions made around 1800 for Robert Morris. The building was internally altered by division into two dwellings around 1982.

The structure combines stone rubble with dressed stone details, the later additions of brick, with most of the exterior stuccoed or rough-cast. It has gabled and hipped slate roofs and a 17th-century stone chimney stack.

The building consists of parallel adjoining ranges with an end-gabled wing projecting on the north side at the east end. The symmetrical entrance front of around 1800, facing south, masks a late 16th-century cross wing at the west end of the south range.

The exterior presents two storeys and attics. The entrance front of around 1800 comprises five bays with a gable-end to the right and hipped end to the left. It has an offset dressed stone chamfered plinth; stuccoed wall face above scribed with false ashlar joints; and stone quoins at both ends. The central entrance doorway is approached by a splayed flight of five stone steps to the threshold, with the bottom step flanked by stone urns on pedestals. The doorway itself features a semicircular arch framed by a stone doorcase of three-quarter columns with feather capitals, dosserets, and an open pediment enclosing a fanlight with radiating glazing bars. There are two sash windows to each side of the doorway and five sashes on the first floor, all with glazing bars (3 by 4 panes) in openings with projecting stone sills.

The west side, dating from around 1600, is of rubble under rough-cast render. It has two large end gables to the roofs of the parallel ranges; the left-hand gable was reformed around 1800 and has projecting eaves, whilst the right-hand gable is coped in stone with a carved stone finial on the apex. A projecting chimney stack of rubble with quoined angles stands against the left-hand gable-end, with weathered offsets at upper level and a moulded string course at the base of the ashlar flue shaft. To the left of the stack on the ground floor is a plain sash in an opening of around 1800; above, in the gable, is a blocked two-light stone mullioned window. To the right of the stack on ground and first floors is irregular fenestration of sashes and casements, with a three-light stone mullioned window with casements above.

On the north side, to the left is a large cross gable of around 1600, and to the right is the projecting wing with a coped end gable. To the left are two cross mullion and transom windows on each floor with leadlight casements, and in the gable a two-light stone mullioned window with leadlight casements.

The east side has a projecting single storey bow to the end of the south range with French doors to a terrace and a single storey conservatory to the left. On the first floor are late 19th-century plain horned sashes.

The interior features, in the wall on the right-hand side of the central entrance hall and in the same wall above on the first floor (originally the east wall of the around 1600 cross wing), the remains of blocked windows with hoodmoulds. The room to the left has details of around 1800 with a richly moulded plaster cornice and a fireplace lined with Delft tiles framed by a chimney-piece with a moulded and eared frame. A room to the left has panelled window jambs and shutters. There is a 19th-century staircase, and in the attic rooms reused panelling of around 1600.

The building was constructed on the site of a medieval grange which belonged to the former Benedictine Abbey of St Peter, Gloucester, and subsequently to the Dean and Chapter of Gloucester Cathedral. It probably incorporates some remains of stone dwarf walls and buttresses thought to have supported an earlier timber-framed building.

The house was leased by Abbot Parker, the last abbot of St Peter's Abbey, to his brother Humphrey, whose descendants occupied it until it was bought by John Morris in 1782. Robert Morris was a Gloucester banker and Member of Parliament for Gloucester. The building served as Barnwood Vicarage from 1937 until around 1975.