Cotteswold House

Cotteswold House is a detached house built in 1912 to designs by Ernest Barnsley (1863-1936), for E Palmer-Bowen, in the Cotswold Arts and Crafts style. The wall separating the front and rear gardens and the garage are excluded from the listing.

The house is constructed from locally-quarried Cotswold limestone with Cotswold stone slate roofs and stone-mullioned windows. The tiles to one of the rear slopes have been replaced.

The plan is irregular, with principal rooms to either side of a central entrance hall, a stair hall beyond, and service rooms set within a rear range.

The building is of two storeys with chamfered stone-mullioned windows of one, two, or three lights with rectangular leaded glazing, and gables to all elevations. The service range to the east is slightly lower than the main range and is set further back. The principal elevation, formerly the garden front, has three bays of slightly different widths, with the left and right bays gabled and projecting forward and the entrance bay set back between them. The double entrance doors are set inside a porch with a four-centred arched, chamfered opening and a gabled dormer window above. There is a rectangular ridge stack between the central and right-hand bays, and at the left gable end, the external stack has two circular chimneys similar to those used by Barnsley at Rodmarton Manor. The attic has louvred ventilators. At the eastern end, the rear range projects eastward, and in the re-entrant angle between the two ranges, there is a curved projection recalling a newel stair, though in fact housing the downstairs lavatory. The main range ends in a gable with a trefoil ventilator, and there are further gabled dormers to the service range. The eastern end of the service range has a wide gable with slightly upturned eaves; two ground-floor windows with segmental-arched heads replace earlier doors. The irregular rear elevation has three gabled bays projecting to various degrees and of varying widths. A small half-glazed porch has been added around the kitchen door. A two-storey extension dating from the 1930s has been inserted in the re-entrant angle between the two ranges towards the western end.

The ground-floor rooms have exposed chamfered beams with broach stops. The doors are plank doors with moulded edges, studding, decorative strap hinges and elaborate door furniture, almost certainly made at Alfred Bucknell's workshop in Sapperton, as are the window catches. The entrance hall has a blocked, splayed opening to the north which was formerly the main entrance. The principal ground-floor rooms have stone fireplaces with moulded openings and mantelpieces. The rear sitting room has a plain early-20th-century timber surround with high uprights and a plank-doored cupboard to the recess. The study has 20th-century finishes, as does the kitchen. The stair in the inner hall has chamfered splat balusters identical to those used by Ernest Barnsley and Norman Jewson elsewhere in the area; the curtail step has been slightly extended. The first-floor rooms have stone fireplaces with brick inserts which are similar to those on the ground floor but on a smaller scale.