Ladlecombe

Ladlecombe is a detached Cotswold vernacular cottage dating from the 18th century or earlier, with Arts and Crafts style remodelling from around the turn of the 20th century. The building is L-shaped in plan, with an early 20th century corrugated asbestos and timber extension to the north west. The front range is aligned north east-south west, with a wing set at right angles projecting north eastwards from the rear of the main range.

The cottage is built of coursed limestone rubble with a roof of Cotswold stone tiles set in diminishing courses with swept valleys. Brick chimney stacks rise at the south east gable end of the main range and the north east gable end of the rear wing. A single storey external verandah or sun room runs along the south-east gable end, with porches to the south east and south west elevations. All these additions have Cotswold stone tiled roofs and chamfered timber uprights with run out stops.

The main range comprises three bays, roughly symmetrical, with a central 18th or 19th century plank entrance door and porch. Ground floor windows have timber lintels and projecting stone cills, featuring 19th century wooden casements with fine and elaborate wrought iron window catches of a type unique to the Stroud valleys. First floor windows are half dormers with projecting stone cills and similar casements and wrought iron work.

The outer face of the wing contains two bays, with an 18th or 19th century plank entrance door and porch to the left, accompanied by similar windows and dormers to those on the main range. The rear of the main range has a 19th century plank entrance door with fine wrought iron door furniture beneath a porch on wooden brackets, with a half dormer above and a small casement to the left on the ground floor. The inner face of the wing has an early 20th century casement replacing a blocked doorway. A late 20th century lean to of reconstituted stone blocks with pent roof of concrete tile adjoins the gable end of the wing.

Interior

The main range contains three rooms. The north east room is a late 19th or early 20th century extension sited outside the line of the original gable end wall. The original range comprises two rooms with massive chamfered beams with ogee stops. The floors are of rammed earth with boards over. The living room features a large inglenook fireplace with chamfered stone surround later lined in brick. The stair to the first floor winds around the chimney breast.

The ground floor of the wing contains another living room with stone floor and 19th century brick fireplace. The first floor comprises a staircase landing, a single room in the wing and two rooms in the main range, with a bathroom and further room created in the 20th century timber and corrugated metal extension beyond the end of the main range.

Exposed principal rafters, tie beams and lower purlins throughout the first floor date from the 18th century or earlier, as do the upper purlins visible in the roof space. The common rafters and ridge plate date from the late 19th century. Doors throughout are 19th century plank doors with good quality wrought iron door furniture.

Historical Context

Ladlecombe is first recorded in the twelfth century, and it seems likely there has been a dwelling on the site since that time, as it sits on a natural building platform halfway down the combe. Below it lie medieval fishponds associated with nearby Prinknash Abbey. The current building clearly dates substantially from the 18th century, though it is first specifically recorded in 1821, when Mr William Todd built himself a summer retreat at the head of Ladlecombe, which later became known as Cranham Lodge. He laid out pleasure grounds which took in Ladlecombe Cottage and constructed thatched buildings known as the Swiss Cottages nearby.

Ladlecombe Cottage is recorded in its current form on the tithe map of 1838. Todd's Cottages had gone out of use by 1861, and the whole site was bought in 1878 by Mr Hicks-Beach. In 1898, Mr Hicks-Beach leased the site to Dr Pruen, who founded the Cotswold Sanatorium on the site, building new thatched cottages with verandahs as wards for patients. Dr Pruen lived in Cranham Lodge, and his colleague Dr Etlinger took up residence at Ladlecombe until 1913, beginning a succession of doctors and their families who lived in the cottage.

The remodelling of Ladlecombe Cottage in an Arts and Crafts idiom with the addition of fine artisan made ironwork seems likely to date from around 1898, when it would have been gentrified to suit the doctors who were to live there until the 1940s. This link with the Cotswold Sanatorium at Cranham is of historical interest, as it was here that George Orwell corrected the proofs of Nineteen Eighty-Four, which was published in the United States whilst he was a patient at the sanatorium.