Willow Court, The Old Court House And Willow House

Willow Court, The Old Court House and Willow House, Beeches Green

This is a complex of three connected buildings in Stroud, comprising a largely intact police and petty sessional court complex of the 19th and 20th centuries with an earlier historic core.

The principal building, Willow Court, is an 18th-century house that was adapted to serve as a police station in 1858 to designs by James Medland (1808-1894), the County Surveyor. Extensions including a cell block, detached stables (Willow House), and an office block were added in 1885-6, also by Medland. The office block was converted to a Petty Sessional Court building (The Old Court House) in 1908 by Robert Phillips, architect to the Gloucestershire Education Committee. Further extensions and alterations were carried out in the 20th century. The police station and stabling were converted to business use in the late 20th century, and the court subsequently became the Liberal Club until the early 21st century.

The buildings are constructed of Cotswold limestone ashlar and rubble with Welsh slate roofs and timber fenestration.

The main three-storey range of Willow Court has a three-bay double-depth plan with a central door and hall, stairs at the rear, and later wings at both ends, with a two-bay extension to the left. The interior retains the 18th-century domestic arrangement with large principal rooms to each floor, though there has been some later reordering. The left bays, on a raised level, retain the police station arrangement with lobby, booking office and cells. The court house has modern office arrangements on the ground floor and court room space on the first floor with adjacent rooms and stairway. The former stable block has modern office subdivisions.

The three-storey main range features a typical 18th-century window arrangement with small openings to the attic floor below a parapet, and a stone storey band below the first-floor windows. The central windows have architraves. The centrally positioned door has a fanlight, Ionic columns, entablature with "POLICE STATION" engraved, a dentil cornice and pediment. 19th and 20th-century extensions introduce canted single-storey bays to the left of the façade and on the right flank wall. The left-hand wing has a parapet with balustrade and is of lower two-storey height. The four-bay court building is two-storey with large first-floor windows, segmental hood moulds and twin banding, with a parapet and balustrade. The Old Court House is connected at first floor to Willow Court via a reinforced concrete arch with doors to either side. The panelled doors have fanlights and plain architraves with "COURT" and "POLICE STATION" engraved above respectively. The door to the police station has a large cast iron button bell to the right. Elevations facing the road are coursed ashlar; the rear elevation is mainly coursed rubble stone. A cast iron stairway and gantry connects the cells, police station and court room. Roof heights vary across the buildings, covered with Welsh slate and featuring dormer windows, stone stacks with drip moulds, and a large copper bell turret above the court building. The former stable block is rubble stone with oversailing eaves and modified openings, forming a coherent group with the police court complex. Cast iron rainwater goods are throughout.

The interior of Willow Court contains exposed 18th-century chamfered beams with stops to the second floor of the earlier range, and large laterally disposed machine-sawn timber to the later rear-projecting ranges. The building retains 18th and 19th-century chimneypieces, window joinery, cornices, and an 18th-century staircase with ramped handrail and stick balusters. The 18th-century timber roof structure is largely intact. The compartmentalised cellar includes barrel vaulting and coal shutes with stone slab floors; it has been strengthened in the 21st century. A later range to the north contains modified police cells with exterior barred windows, 20th-century graffiti, and cell doors with barred windows above, together with booking office window and door divisions. The Old Court House has an early 20th-century stone staircase with pitch pine newel and handrail leading to an intact first-floor courtroom with bench, dock (in part), and an elaborate plaster ceiling with a hatchway to the bell tower. Cast-iron grilles are found throughout the buildings. Willow House was not inspected at the time of listing assessment but is understood to contain no internal features of interest.