Hempsted House

GLOUCESTER

SO81NW RECTORY LANE, Hempsted 844-1/3/445 (North side) 12/03/73 Hempsted House

GV II

Formerly known as: Rectory RECTORY LANE Hempsted. Rectory, since 1954 a house. Dated 1671, with C18 and early C19 additions and alterations. For Sir John Scudamore, Viscount Scudamore. Brick partly rendered in roughcast and stucco, dressed stone details and features; gabled slate roof, brick stacks. Originally cruciform; the central projection at rear extended as a long wing in early C19. EXTERIOR: two storeys and attic; symmetrical front of five bays rendered in roughcast with a cross-gable over the projecting central bay and gabled dormers over the end bays; chamfered offset ashlar plinth. The central entrance doorway renewed in mid C18 with a stone doorcase in gothick style with an ogee-arched head and a continuous moulded architrave to the jambs and the arch which is crowned with a large foliated finial; the doorcase is flanked by slender panelled pilasters with moulded caps and crowning pinnacles, within each panel thin strapwork in relief; in the doorway an ogee fanlight with gothic glazing bars, and a six-panel door with the four upper panels fielded; repeated from the original doorway the date 1671 and inscribed on the archivolt of the arch the couplet, "Who'eer doth dwell within this door, Thank God for Viscount Scudamore"; the second line of the couplet, as originally inscribed on the earlier doorcase for John Gregory, the first incumbent rector to live in the house and later Archdeacon of Gloucester, reads "Pray God for Viscount Scudamore." Added to the right-hand bay in early C19 a single-storey bay window with shallow gabled roof; scalloped barge boards to the gable and a turned apex finial; the front of the bay a timber mullion and upper transom five-light casement window; on the ground floor in the bay immediately to right of the central projection and in the bays to left stone-framed mullion and upper transom two-light casement windows; on the first floor in each bay a similar window and in the central cross gable and in the dormer over each end bay a shorter two-light mullion window. At the end of the rear wing a two-storey canted bay; in each face of the bay on both floors a sash with glazing bars (3x4) panes in openings with rubbed brick flat arches and projecting sills.

INTERIOR: believed to have been largely refitted in early C19. HISTORY: John, Viscount Scudamore was a devout Anglican and a friend of Archbishop Laud, formerly Dean of Gloucester, he was also Lord of the Manor of Hempsted. The house was built for his wife, as part of his endowment of the Rectory of Hempsted, but not completed before his death.

Listing NGR: SO8138616988