Yew Tree House

Yew Tree House

A detached house set back from Vicarage Street in Painswick, built in 1670 for Thomas Loveday. It is constructed of limestone ashlar with a stone slate roof and ashlar chimney stacks.

The house exemplifies a very regular cross-gabled design, taking advantage of a steep fall in the site. The main front faces away from the street, with a lower ground floor built against the slope on the street side but fully exposed on the garden front. The plan is compact and centralised, with a central through hall containing a dog-leg staircase, flanked by single rooms of approximately 5 metres square at each level. The building rises to two storeys with an attic and basement, all with regular chimney breasts positioned on the rear gable walls facing the street. A small two-storey extension with single ridge roof was added at the east end in the early twentieth century, incorporating some earlier window fragments.

The exterior features recessed chamfer stone-mullioned casements as the primary window type, although some late eighteenth-century replacements with glazing-bar sashes are evident. The entrance front has a small central gable with an oculus in a square enriched panel above a two-light casement without mullion. Above this is a portico with plain Roman Doric columns carrying a lead-covered tent-hood over a fine plank and nail-head door, probably from the sixteenth century or earlier, set within a moulded architrave. All gables are coped. The two main gables facing the street carry fine ashlar stacks with triple shafts, detached but with conjoined moulded cappings set diagonally in a triangular formation. Moulded strings run above the ground and first floors around all fronts.

The garden front was originally fenestrated symmetrically with seven small two-light mullioned casements at ground and first floor levels, but was modified in the eighteenth century. It now displays a small two-light window with stopped drip to each gable beneath a small oculus vent, and a small oculus to a lower central gable. At first floor there is a central two-light window, one twelve-pane sash to the left, and two two-light casements to the right. The ground floor has a central two-light, two large twelve-pane sashes to the left, and one two-light and one sash to the right. The lower ground floor or basement is built in large square coursed blocks set forward to form a plinth, with a three-light mullioned casement to a stopped drip on the left and an off-centre door flanked by small single lights beneath a flat-roofed pillared portico. To the right is the gabled extension with a two-light casement at first floor and a small square stack. A rubble extension projects from the original wall with long raking coping. At the junction of new and old structures is a cropped stack on the corner, inserted before the extension was added. The east gable end has single windows at each level: a two-light to the gable, three-light at first floor, four-light with king mullion at ground floor retaining early leading in small rectangular panes, and two-light to the basement. The opposite gable has a small oculus above a two-light casement, then the added range in two storeys with two two-light windows above a single two-light and a door.

Internally, each main room has two chamfered and stopped beams, hacked as if for plaster but with no evidence they were actually plastered. The ground floor left room has a large fireplace with bolection-mould surround and pulvinated frieze to the moulded mantelshelf, possibly a twentieth-century replacement, containing a square stone surround with quadrant mould. The walls are finished with large plain panels with thin muntins, a moulded dado rail, and a moulded cornice, all painted. The four-light window has nineteenth-century iron-framed secondary glazing fitted behind the small-scale leading. One pane of a sash retains a rough scratched date of 1791. The former kitchen to the left of entry has a wide fireplace with deep stone chamfered lintel with a central joint on stone jambs, and a rough timber bressumer immediately below the main beams at a higher level. The main door has heavy horizontal planking internally. The central staircase has one short flight to the basement with an early balustrade comprising a solid string, turned balusters, square newel and moulded handrail. There is evidence of an external door from the quarter-landing to the basement.

The basement has stone floors and a series of regularly-spaced beams. A seventeenth-century panelled door, probably relocated from elsewhere in the house, survives, as does a small nineteenth-century fireplace on the garden front corresponding with the cropped corner stack. The centre of the rear wall contains an unexplained niche-like recess possibly to a former well, opposite which is a stone slab with moulded edge set on three shaped brackets, reminiscent of a table tomb. The external door is a modified sixteenth-century plank and nail-head door similar to the main entry.

At first floor, ceiling beams have generally been repaired with careful scarfed ends and iron brackets, probably in the nineteenth century. The room to the right of the staircase has a small bolection-mould fireplace with Regency iron grate, and the three-light casement has a long moulded panel above and three cupboard doors with fielded panelling below. The opposite room has a nineteenth-century stone fire surround with fine Regency grate. At attic level, framed partitions occur to the two central trusses with exposed collars to the remainder, one exhibiting a pronounced central camber. There is one seventeenth-century six-panel door with plank and moulded batten backing, and small nineteenth-century stone fire surrounds. The casements retain early iron fittings.

This is a very fine house with minimal alterations, exemplifying the more centralised Renaissance plan forms and architectural fashions becoming increasingly influential in the region from the late seventeenth century onwards. The Lovedays were a prominent Quaker family in Painswick, with burials recorded from 1685 to 1771 in the burial ground nearby in Vicarage Street. They were also mill-owners, and Loveday's Mill with its associated house survives in an adjacent valley.