Ladlecombe

Details

A detached Cotswold vernacular cottage dating from the C18 or earlier, with Arts and Crafts style remodelling dating from the turn of the C20. The building is L-shaped on plan, with an early C20 corrugated asbestos and timber extension to the north west. The front range is aligned north east-south west, with a wing set at right angles projecting north eastwards from the rear of the main range. The cottage is built of coursed limestone rubble with a roof of Cotswold stone tiles set in diminishing courses, with swept valleys. There are brick chimney stacks to the south east gable end of the main range and the north east gable end of the wing to the rear. There is a single storey external verandah or sun room running along the south-east gable end, and porches to the south east and south west elevations, all with Cotswold stone tiled roofs and chamfered timber uprights with run out stops. The main range is of three bays, roughly symmetrical, with central C18/C19 plank entrance door and porch; the windows to the ground floor have timber lintels and projecting stone cills, and are C19 wooden casements with fine and elaborate wrought iron window catches, of a type which are unique to the Stroud valleys. Those to the first floor are half dormers with projecting stone cills and similar casements and wrought iron work. The outer face of the wing is of two bays, with C18/C19 plank entrance door and porch to the left, with similar windows and dormers to those on the main range. The rear of the main range has a C19 plank entrance door with fine wrought iron door furniture under a porch on wooden brackets, with a half dormer above, and a small casement to the left of the door on the ground floor. The inner face of the wing has an early C20 casement replacing a doorway which has been blocked with brick. To the gable and of the wing is a late C20 lean to of reconstituted stone blocks with pent roof of concrete tile.

Interior : The main range is of three rooms, that to the north east an extension dating from the late C19/early C20 and sited outside the line of the original gable end wall. The original range is of two rooms, with massive chamfered beams with ogee stops. The floors are of rammed earth with boards over. The living room has large inglenook fireplace with stone surround having chamfered edges, later lined in brick. The stair to the first floor winds around the chimney breast. To the ground floor of the wing is another living room with stone floor and C19 brick fireplace. To the first floor is a staircase landing, a single room in the wing and two rooms in the main range, with a bathroom and further room created in the C20 timber and corrugated metal extension beyond the end of the main range. There are exposed principal rafters, tie beams and lower purlins throughout the first floor, which, together with the upper purlins visible in the roof space date from the C18 or earlier, with the common rafters and ridge plate dating from the late C19. The doors are C19 plank doors with good quality wrought iron door furniture.

Ladlecombe is first recorded in the twelfth century and it seems likely that there has been a dwelling on the site since that time, as it sits on a natural building platform halfway down the combe. Below it are medieval fishponds associated with the nearby Prinknash Abbey. The current building clearly dates substantially from the C18, though it is first specifically recorded in 1821, when Mr William Todd built himself a summer retreat at the head of Ladlecombe, which later became known as Cranham Lodge. He laid out pleasure grounds which took in Ladlecombe Cottage, and constructed thatched buildings known as the Swiss Cottages nearby. Ladlecombe Cottage is recorded in its current form on the tithe map of 1838. Todd's Cottages had gone out of use by 1861, and the whole site was bought in 1878 by a Mr Hicks-Beach. In 1898, Mr Hicks-Beach leased the site to Dr Pruen, who founded the Cotswold Sanatorium on the site, building new thatched cottages with verandahs as wards for the patients. Dr Pruen lived in Cranham Lodge, and his colleague Dr Etlinger took up residence at Ladlecombe until 1913, beginning a succession of doctors and their families who lived in the cottage. The remodelling of Ladlecombe Cottage in an Arts and Crafts idiom with the addition of fine artisan made ironwork seems likely therefore to date from the period around 1898, when it would have been gentrified to make it more suited to the doctors who were to live there until the 1940s. This link with the Cotswold Sanatorium at Cranham is of historical interest, as it was here that George Orwell corrected the proofs of Nineteen Eighty-Four, which was published in the United States whilst he was a patient at the sanatorium.

Sources : Whitton, J K : A History of the Cotswold Sanatorium Company Ltd, Cranham, private publication, 1998.

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