Details
STROUD
882/5/62 BEECHES GREEN
01-MAY-51 Willow Court, The Old Court House and
Willow House
(Formerly listed as:
GLOUCESTER STREET
POLICE STATION)
GV II
C18 house (Willow Court), adapted to police station in 1858 to the designs of James Medland (1808-1894). Cell block and detached stables (Willow House) probably added in 1885-6 by Medland. Petty Sessional court building (The Old Court House) added in 1908, designed by Robert Phillips.
MATERIALS: Cotswold limestone ashlar and rubble. Welsh slate roofs and timber fenestration.
PLAN: A main three-bay double-depth range with central door and hall; stairs at the rear and later wings at both ends. There is a two-bay extension to the left. The main range retains the C18 domestic arrangement with large principal rooms to each floor, although there is some later reordering. The left bays, on a raised level, retain the arrangement of the police station with lobby, booking office and cells. The attached court house has a modern office arrangement to the ground floor and court room space to the first floor, with adjacent rooms and stairway. The stable block has modern office subdivisions.
EXTERIOR: The three-storey main range has a typical C18 window arrangement with small openings to the attic floor, below a parapet. There is a stone storey band below the first-floor windows. The central windows have architraves. The centrally positioned door has a fanlight, Ionic columns, entablature (with POLICE STATION engraved), dentil cornice and pediment. C19/ C20 extensions introduce canted single-storey bays to the left of the façade and on the right flank wall. The left-hand wing also has a parapet with balustrade and is of a lower two-storey height. The four-bay court building is two-storey with large first-floor windows, segmental hood moulds and twin banding. There is a parapet with balustrade. The Old Court House is connected at first floor to Willow Court via a reinforced concrete arch with doors to either side. The panelled doors have fanlights and the doorways have plain architraves with COURT (to the left) and POLICE STATION (to the right) engraved above. The door to the police station has a large cast iron button bell to the right. Elevations facing the road are coursed ashlar, and the rear elevation is mainly coursed rubble stone. A cast iron stairway and gantry connects the cells, police station and court room. Roof heights vary across the buildings, are covered with Welsh slate, and feature dormer windows, stone stacks with drip moulds, and a large copper bell turret above the court building. The former stable block is rubble stone with oversailing eaves and modified openings, and forms a cogent group with the police court complex. There are cast iron rainwater goods.
INTERIOR: Willow Court has exposed C18 chamfered beams with stops to the second floor of the earlier range and large laterally disposed machine-sawn timber to the later, rear-projecting ranges. Across the building are C18 and C19 chimneypieces, window joinery and cornices, and an C18 staircase with ramped handrail and stick balusters. The C18 timber roof structure is largely intact. The compartmentalised cellar includes barrel vaulting and coal shutes, and has been strengthened in the C21. It retains stone slab floors. A later range to the north contains modified police cells with exterior barred windows, C20 graffiti, and cell doors with barred windows above. There are booking office window and door divisions. The Old Court House has an early C20 stone staircase with pitch pine newel and handrail leading to an intact first floor courtroom with bench, dock (in part) and elaborate plaster ceiling with hatchway to bell tower. Other details across the buildings include cast-iron grilles. Willow House not inspected (2009), but understood to contain no internal features of interest.
HISTORY: The police station, formerly Willow House, was built in Badbrook, on the rural edge of Stroud, probably in the early C18. Willow House was converted to a police station in 1858 to the designs of James Medland of Gloucester (the County Surveyor between 1857 and 1889). Medland designed most of the county's eleven purpose-built courts and police stations constructed between the 1860s and 1880s. Extensions to Stroud police station, designed by Medland, were carried out in 1885-6 when a cell block, stables and an office block to the north-west of the station were built. The office block was converted to a Petty Sessional Court in 1908 by Robert Phillips, architect to the Gloucestershire Education Committee. Other extensions and alterations were also carried out in the C20. The police station (now called Willow Court) and the stabling behind (now called Willow House) were converted to business use in the late C20. The court became the Liberal Club, until the early C21.
SOURCES:
Allan Brodie, Gary Winter and Stephen Porter, The Law Court 1800 - 2000: Developments in form and function (2001), 128
Clare Graham, Ordering Law: The Architectural and Social History of the English Law Court to 1914 (2003), 351.
N. M. Herbert, R. B. Pugh (Editors), A. P. Baggs, A. R. J. Jurica, W. J. Sheils, A History of the County of Gloucester: Volume 11: Bisley and Longtree Hundreds (1976), 56-65
David Verey & Alan Brooks, The Buildings of England: Gloucestershire I: The Cotswolds (1999), 660
REASONS FOR DESIGNATION
Willow Court, including The Old Court Office and former Court House, and Willow House, Beeches Green is designated at Grade II for the following principal reasons:
* A largely intact police and petty sessional court complex of the C19/ C20 with an earlier historic core.
* Good survival of C18 house interior fittings including staircase, cornicing, chimneypieces and window joinery.
* Good survival of C19 police station and early C20 court interior fittings including cells, ornate plaster ceiling, bench and dock.
