Gyde House And Terrace Wall With Steps

Gyde House is an orphanage, later a children’s home, built around 1913 by Percy Richard Morley Horder. It is constructed of Painswick stone ashlar with stone slate roofs. The building has a large, symmetrical design with a shallow 'U' shape to the main front and three rear wings forming an 'E', the central arm being the longest. The internal layout is irregular, with no imposing public rooms or staircases; former dormitory spaces have been sub-divided.

The south front is two and a half storeys high, cross-gabled, with projecting outer wings one bay deep. The central section has a coped gabled bay with an oriel window above the doorway, flanked by two smaller, flush gables. The window arrangement is complex, featuring mullioned and transomed casements, stopped hoods to the ground floor, a pattern of small casements at the first floor, and mullioned casements with stopped hoods in the gables. The window chamfers are generally plain, though the ground floor mullions are recessed. Large external stacks are located at the internal corners of the wings, featuring stone slated offsets, diagonally set flues, neckings and moulded cappings. Two ridge stacks, with similar flues, flank the central bay. A two-leaf oak door is set in a Tudor surround in the centre.

The right return has two flush gables, various casements and a Tudor door roughly central; the left return is similar, but extends to include a large round archway giving access to a courtyard. A bellcote sits above this archway. Inside the courtyard, a canted, single-storey bay faces the archway, and a gabled porch with a bolection mould door surround and deep-set pair of doors is to the right. The central wing is five or six windows deep, with three Cotswold dormers and three paired stacks, the central one with diagonally set flues.

A terrace wall in stone, with plain copings, runs across the full width of the main frontage. The wall returns on the west front and incorporates simple steps. The building exemplifies the continuation of the Cotswold vernacular tradition and occupies a prominent position overlooking Painswick.