Frome Top

Frome Top is a house constructed around 1926 in the Cotswold Arts and Crafts style, designed by Norman Jewson for Clement Templeton. The house is built of local oolitic limestone, squared and brought to course, with a Cotswold stone slate roof, ashlar dressings, and rubble stone stacks. It has a roughly L-shaped plan with a narrow hall serving as a passage between the ranges and against the cross-wing. A small ancillary room extends to the north-west, part of the original design.

The building is two storeys and an attic. The main south-west and south-east elevations are characterised by deep gables that extend down through the entire first floor, with eaves rising from the level of the first-floor ceilings. The south-west front, the entrance front, features a pair of these deep gables, with two- and three-light stone-mullioned windows incorporating rectangular leaded lights and rectangular ventilators at the apexes. The entrance is recessed and contains a half-glazed timber door. Smaller one- and two-light windows illuminate the ancillary rooms on the ground floor. The south-eastern elevation includes a projecting, gabled bay, a later extension, and a smaller bay window to the ground floor on the left. Other windows are three- and four-light mullioned windows also with rectangular leading. The north-eastern front has a central gabled bay from which a gable-end stack rises; a matching stack rises from the rear of the front gable. The re-entrant angle contains a small, flat-roofed single-storey bay providing access via a plank door to the through-passage. Above this bay is a three-light stone-mullioned window; one window has been replaced with a late 20th-century three-light timber casement. Adjacent to this, a more recent extension projects forward by two bays. The garden front features 20th-century multi-paned timber and glazed doors. The gable end has two, three-light stone-mullioned windows with modern glazing and a matching ventilator. A rooflight is set into the slope of the roof. A small, single-storey ancillary room extends at right-angles from the cross-wing, likely serving as a boot room or similar.

Due to lack of interior inspection, details are limited to what is evident from photographs from 2012 sales particulars. These illustrate large-section chamfered beams with run-out stops, typical of Cotswold building, in the dining room, along with a Cotswold stone fireplace in the living room. The dining room also features a panelled corner cupboard. The photographs suggest exposed beams in at least one other room, and a range of fitted cupboards and window seats, which may be original.