Cirencester, Gloucestershire

Above standard

I thought this building, just a couple of streets away from the timber-gabled, tile-hung pub in my previous post, would make a good follow-up to it. This is the former offices of the Wilts and Gloucestershire Standard newspaper.* It’s almost the same age as the pub – 1904 rather than 1902 in the case of the Brewer’s Arms – and also has timbered gables. But there the resemblance ends. The ground floor is in a sort of Cotswold Renaissance revival style – the mullioned window, Elizabethan-looking pilasters, and carved capitals would be at home in any Cotswold town, Painswick, Chipping Campden or Cirencester itself. But above, things change gear and the whole frontage is timber-framed, with big oriel windows and very fancy woodwork, from carved beams studded with Tudor roses to elaborate bargeboards. The upper floor is also jettied out to overhang the street.

This fine and rather surprising† building is the work of a Cirencester architect called Vincent Alexander Lawson, who worked in the town between 1885 and 1928. This example of his work is clearly very assured. He designed plenty of other buildings in the town and round about, and civil engineering work (he was a qualified civil engineer) as well as a lot of more straightforward Cotswold revival buildings. This striking office structure shows him exploring styles a bit more widely, if not wildly.

“Photograph it before it goes!” exclaimed the Resident Wise Woman, and she was right. The building is for sale, and though I’m sure the frontage will be preserved, the signage should be protected as well as the structure. The building is listed, and the signs are mentioned in the listing text, so there’s hope. That’s good because signs are often what go first from an old town-centre building, and the former newspaper office has not only some good lettering above the door and window but also a lovely hanging sign. This is shield-shaped, well lettered, and suspended from a very lively wrought-iron bracket with a touch of Art Nouveau in its curves. Information, craftsmanship, and enjoyment in one small package. Worth holding the front page for, I’d say.

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* The building only ceased to be used by the newspaper in 2017, and for much of its life combined the editorial office at the front with a print works at the rear. 

† Surprising, that is, in the context of Cirencester, where one might expect that a fine building of this period would be built entirely out of stone.