Cowhill

A house in a row at 23 Cowhill, Tetbury Street, Minchinhampton, dating from the later 16th or earlier 17th century with alterations in the later 17th or early 18th century.

The house is built of limestone rubble brought to course, with Cotswold stone slates to the front roof slopes and concrete tile to the rear. The chimney stack has been rebuilt in red brick. It comprises a main range fronting the road with a short gabled cross-wing to the rear, and is of two storeys with a basement, two bays wide.

The ground floor of the main range has a three-light chamfered stone-mullioned window with metal casements featuring rectangular leading. The first floor contains two similar windows, each of two lights. A wide doorway to the right of the ground floor is reached by a short flight of stone-built steps. The rear cross-wing has a replacement two-light stone-mullioned window in the gable end, with a small window opening below under a timber lintel. A similar two-light window is positioned in the ground floor of the inner face of the wing. The main range features a shallow four-centred arched doorway to the left of the ground floor under a timber lintel. To the right, a shallow chute extending downwards from the first floor is expressed externally as a concave plastered recess under a timber lintel; its purpose is unclear, though it has been tentatively interpreted as a garderobe.

Internally, the ground floor of the main range forms a single large room with an exposed chamfered and stopped beam, and a substantial inglenook fireplace under a timber bressumer. To the left of the chimney breast, two plank and batten doors set in chamfered four-centred-arched openings of probable 17th-century date lead to the stairs: a stone winder stair descending to the cellar with a vaulted ceiling, and a wider timber winder stair rising to the first floor. The rear wing contains the kitchen on the ground floor. The first floor of the main range is divided into two rooms with exposed roof timbers. The original trusses, visible within the walls, reveal that the roof has been raised from one-and-a-half to two storeys. The trusses are simple A-frames with lapped collars over paired principal rafters and staggered twin purlins. The rear wing, now housing a bathroom, has an exposed roof structure of similar character to the main range.

The house is entered by a new double-thickness plank door with regular nail studding and round-ended strap hinges set on pintles.

Minchinhampton developed as a medieval settlement on a cross plan formed by the intersection of the east-west Tetbury to Stroud road (now Tetbury Street and West End) and a north-south road linking the south of the parish to the Stroud to Cirencester road. The medieval town was centred on the market place and expanded during the 17th century to include the area where Tetbury Street numbers 17 to 23 now stand. Land belonging to the Rectory in the area of Friday Street and Tetbury Street had seven tenements by 1635, 19 by 1677, and 40 by 1707. Many late 16th and early 17th-century houses in the area were originally one-and-a-half storeys, as evidenced by examples in Friday Street; however, many 17th-century houses were rebuilt during the 18th century.

Number 23 Tetbury Street originated in the 16th century as a one-and-a-half storey house. Like other houses in the locality, its roof was raised to full two storeys in the following century, and at the same time the house was extended by the addition of a cross-wing to the rear. The footprint of the house appears consistent through the Ordnance Survey map series published between 1885 and 1923. Much property owned by the Rectory was sold off between 1809 and 1830. Deeds held by the current owner date to the ownership of John Crosburn Neal, a farmer from Bradford on Avon whose will of 1864 includes tenements and messuages in Tetbury Street; his family's Minchinhampton holdings encompassed land immediately east and west of number 23, as well as the large field to the rear known locally as the Lemon Field, also formerly owned by the Rectory. Gloucestershire Archives records show the site was previously owned by John Crosburn, a brewster from Minchinhampton; these deeds may predate Neal's ownership. The holdings were sold in 1902 by Neal's heirs to Edmund Kimber, a manufacturer of woollen cloth from Minchinhampton.

The house is listed at Grade II as a well-preserved 16th-century town cottage with 17th-century alterations and additions. It retains its plan form unaltered and preserves some good 17th-century joinery. It also possesses group value with the adjacent row of cottages and the large number of other listed buildings flanking either side of Tetbury Street.