Newton House

Newton House is a row house, now in office use, situated on Church Street in Tewkesbury. The building dates from the late 14th or 15th century but was substantially remodelled in the 18th century and refronted in the early 19th century.

The structure comprises a front block—a probable former solar block—which includes a main street-facing section with a small set-back low hipped addition formerly serving as the entrance area (originally No.26), behind which extends a long gabled wing that was formerly an open hall, now heavily modified. The front elevation presents 3 storeys above a basement with 3 windows across, finished in Flemish brickwork with slate roofs and brick stacks. The windows are 16-pane sashes set within rubbed brick voussoirs, except at ground floor where glazing bars are absent; a cill string runs to the first floor with stone cills elsewhere. A fine 6-panel fielded door to the right is set within a pilaster surround supporting an open pediment over an obscured fanlight. The brick stacks sit at both party walls. The left return presents plain brickwork with a central sash to the second floor, but for approximately 3 metres from ground level the wall is finished in good ashlar with remains of a blocked 2-light casement. A small hipped 2-storey slated extension with a canted corner and panelled door adjoins this elevation. The main roof is double-hipped behind the street parapet and its return. Sashes appear in the rear wall.

Attached to the rear left is a long 2-storey wing with a steep gabled roof and plain brickwork to its left side; the garden-facing side is fenestrated with 3 plus 1 windows. At first-floor level are three 3-light wood casements and a 2-light 20th-century steel window, while the ground floor contains various 20th-century insertions alongside a fine 18th-century canted bay with 12-pane sashes on 3 faces, covered by a hipped glazed roof of matching date. Towards the right of this wing stands a 6-panel fielded door beneath a propped canopy. A small raking dormer sits far left, with a very large ridge stack and one other towards the left end. A deep fascia board possibly conceals the plate.

The interior of the front block includes various panelled doors in moulded architraves and a lateral dogleg stair with stick balustrade and Doric newels. Beneath this runs a cellar stair, its first 3 steps constructed in brick with timber facing, the remainder in stone. The front cellar floor is brick with a ceiling of heavy transverse rough-chamfered beams. The cellar serving the rear hall section contains several very heavy rough-chamfered beams that terminate at a brick wall featuring recesses and a stair not accessible from above.

The rear wing is now fully subdivided into 2 floors but retains various trusses with cambered ties and collars featuring cusped ogee-headed bracing above, a detail also found at the half-bay points where chamfered wind-braces meet the cambered tie heads. Two roof bays were observed, though the wing is reported to continue this pattern throughout and show signs of smoke blackening, suggesting its medieval origin. A first-floor front room in the wing features a fine shouldered 18th-century fire surround with pulvinated frieze and dentilled cornice, together with a corner cupboard displaying a painted shell recess above a field-panelled cupboard door on H-hinges. The central ground-floor room contains 17th-century panelling to its fireplace wall; this is the room with the canted bay beneath the glazed roof.

The rear wing represents the remains of a major medieval hall house, discernible now only through its overall form and surviving roof structure. Later work, particularly from the 18th century, is of high quality and remains well-maintained. No.26 was listed separately on 27 July 1973.