The Gloucestershire Cotswolds

Click on gallery image to view larger picture

In the second of our series on domestic architecture styles Roger Hunt considers the iconic villages of Lower and Upper Slaughter in the Cotswolds, where the use of local stone, in everything from manor houses to cottages, dictates the character.

Think of Gloucestershire’s building materials and inevitably the picture conjured is one of serene, honey hued Cotswold stone. Burnished by the sunshine of early morning or evening, the walls and roofs of the cottages, manor houses and churches glow with welcome. These period properties were built on the back of the wool trade, its success due to the fleece of the Cotswold lion sheep, which was prized by the weavers of Italy and Flanders.

Nowhere does the underlying geology of a county better exhibit itself, for the buildings and even the cottage floors and dry stone field walls have, almost without exception, been hewn from the local stone. Bringing a magical architectural unity to the area, yellow oolitic limestone is the common theme throughout the Cotswolds. It is part of a great swathe of limestone that runs all the way from Yorkshire, through Derbyshire, the Cotswolds and Dorset across the Channel to Normandy, and which ranges in colour from snow white to butterscotch. Relatively easy to work, unlike granite, this variety of stone lends itself very well to the stonemason’s art and the creation of beautifully fluid architectural detail.

The landscape of the Cotswolds is dotted by numerous abandoned quarries from which the stone was taken. Indeed, a quarry at the Slaughters, close to Stow on the Wold, supplied stone slates for New College Oxford as early at 1452 and quarrying still goes on today around the nearby village of Naunton.

The name ‘Slaughter’ derives from the Anglo- Saxon and means ‘muddy’ or ‘miry place’, yet Lower and Upper Slaughter are two of the most picturesque and verdant villages to be found in the Cotswolds. They lie just a mile apart and are linked by the gentle waters of the River Eye, a tributary of the River Windrush. It was along this watercourse that the stone was floated on small barges to Oxford and beyond.

ABOVE (left-right): With Norman origins, but restored in Victorian times, the church of St Peter’s is a focal point in Upper Slaughter; A view of the 19th-century Old Mill with its original water wheel in Lower Slaughter; the building is undergoing repairs to revive it as a working mill.

Building traditions
The Normans popularised the use of stone. Before the Conquest it was rarely employed as a building material but was used extensively after 1066 for the construction of castles, monasteries, royal houses and other high status buildings. Noblemen followed suit by using stone for their halls and, in the stone bearing regions, it was eventually used widely for cottages and other more ordinary structures. Even so, the way stone was laid and the quality of the finish still directly reflected a building’s status.

The finest were of ashlar. This is defined by very fine joints and can only be achieved with stone capable of being dressed to a smooth finish. Less demanding of the stonemason is dressed stone which is squared all round and smooth only on its face. Roughly dressed stone, levelled out to a similar thickness and laid in courses, is known as coursed rubble work, while walling built up of stone taken directly from the ground, and laid in a wall in random sizes, is known as random rubble.

Stone is also frequently used as a roofing material too. Limestone, which can be split along the grain, is ideal for this purpose. The action of frost after quarrying was often relied on to divide it into usable pieces and the edges were then trimmed by hand and a hole was made near the top of each tile to accommodate an oak peg or nail, enabling it to be hooked over a roofing batten.

Limestone roofs are generally made up of smaller tiles than those formed of other stones, allowing intricate details such as swept and laced valleys (where the tiles from two different planes of the roof meet and are angled or interlaced to fix them together and make them watertight) and roofs over dormer windows. Stone tiled roofs tend to be laid to diminishing courses – gradually decreasing in size as they go up the roof – thereby minimising the amount of waste by utilising all the available stone and ensuring that there are fewer joints at the base of the roof where the rainwater run-off is concentrated.

ABOVE (left-right): Lower Slaughter was wealthy enough to afford its own church, and contracted a stonemason to build St Mary’s, which has an elegant stone spire to mark it out; In winter the two Slaughters, twinkling with lights in the early evening, create a scene that has changed little over 300 years.

Village highlights
In both Lower and Upper Slaughter simple stone footbridges straddle the river. Mullioned windows give the limestone facades of the cottages and houses depth while well-proportioned dormers prick the roof lines.

Lower Slaughter lies just off the Roman Fosse Way and the cottages – the oldest dating from the early 17th century – are built mostly on the river’s north bank around a small green. Standing at the heart of the village, the church of St Mary was almost completely rebuilt in 1867 after the structure had become so unsafe that services were held instead at the manor next door. The 17th-century Lower Slaughter Manor is now a hotel. Its historical records state that, in 1655, an important stonemason called Valentine Strong was contracted to build the property ‘for the sum of £200 in lawful English money’. Strong’s sons were also the principal contractors employed by Sir Christopher Wren in the building of St Paul’s Cathedral.

In stark contrast to the stone of the cottages at the upper end of the village, the tall chimney of Lower Slaughter’s 19th-century corn mill is of red brick. Brick is a great rarity in the area and was used because stone would have been unsuitable for building a chimney of this height. The mill last produced flour in 1958 but the 15ft diameter water wheel has recently been restored and turns, although it does not power the mill. Open as a museum and tearoom, the mill is currently undergoing long term repair with the aim of bringing it back to life as a working mill.

In Upper Slaughter the handsome church of St Peter has Norman origins but was substantially restored in 1877. To the corner of the churchyard is a small open square with a group of eight cottages that were remodelled around 1906-13 by the renowned architect Sir Edwin Lutyens. Among the many other fine buildings, the former Rectory, now the Lords of the Manor hotel, was originally home to the Witts family. The mid-19th century diary entries and letters of the Reverend Francis Edward Witts are recorded in The Diary of a Cotswold Parson.

Visit Roger Hunt's website at huntwriter.com

WORDS ROGER HUNT PHOTOGRAPHS HUGH PALMER (Courtesy of The Most Beautiful Villages of England); ISTOCKPHOTO.COM
Featured in the February 2011 issue of Period Living