Stow-on-the-Wold, Gloucestershire

Into the wood

St Edward’s church stands in the middle of the Cotswold market town of Stow-on-the-Wold. It’s medieval and, even though it’s tucked away from the main square – one way in is down a side street, another approach is via an alley – it must be very much visited. I suspect, though, that many visitors don’t notice the doorway in my photograph. That’s because it’s the north door, and the main entrance is through the south door, which is the one you see as you approach the church via the most obvious route. People who don’t walk around a church as well as going inside often miss architectural and scenic treats, and this is both.

The church is very old – parts date back to the 11th or 12th century – but, like most parish churches, it was altered in the medieval period and later. The north porch is said to date form the 17th or 18th century. It’s in the gothic style developed in the Middle Ages, but the way in which the arch is top by a band of little windows is unusual. This kind of window isn’t something I’ve noticed in a church before – maybe it’s a local mason’s invention, maybe there are other examples I have missed. Whichever is the case, it’s pleasant, and must bring useful additional light into the porch.

Many people, however, won’t even notice the architecture. It’s the trees that catch the eye, a pair of yews of considerable age, growing so hard by the arch that they seem part of it. Building and trees seem to be growing together, and one hopes that the slow-growing yew’s roots are not doing too much damage to the building, as it’s an effect I’d be loth to lose.

When I researched this doorway online, I chanced on websites run for Tolkien enthusiasts that compared the doorway to the doors of Durin in The Lord of the Rings. Speculation was rife that the writer had been inspired by the doorway – Stow can be reached from Tolkien’s Oxford home in an hour or so, after all. Well, maybe. I don’t think there’s any hard evidence that the novelist came here, and it would not have been hard for Tolkien to have the idea independently, especially as these doors were made by Dwarves and Elves, and the Elven folk lived in an arboreal world. And the architecture pedant in me wants to point out that Tolkien’s archway is Romanesque and semicircular, while the entrance at Stow is pointed and Gothic. Trees and churches, trees and the sacred and significant: they’re never far apart, although rarely as physically close as here.

Stow-on-the-Wold, Gloucestershire

Stone from the wold

Here’s another repost from ten years ago to entertain my readers during my stretch of pre-Christmas work hyperactivity. It’s a house in the Cotswold town of Stow-on-the-Wold, and a place I always glance at when I pass. Its architecture gives me pleasure – although I do worry that some of the unusual bits of carving on the front are eroding away. The old-fashioned tea shop that used to occupy the ground floor has now closed (there’s a lot of competition in Stow, some of it very impressive), and last time I went by the building looked empty. But the architecture, albeit crumbling at the edges, is still there to enjoy.

Here’s what I wrote about it back in December 2008.

There are some buildings that just make me smile, no matter how often I see them. This is one: a house of about 1730 (now a café) on the market place in Stow-on-the-Wold. What I love about this house is the decoration. It’s Classical, up to a point – look at the fluted pilasters with their Corinthian capitals. But whoever built this place was determined not to stick to the rule book. Those pilasters begin, not with a base, anchoring them to the ground, but with a peculiar block of stone sticking out from the wall, a couple of feet above pavement level. The strips that run up from either side of the central niche, dotted with carvings of flowers, are another odd, but charming, touch.

Pevsner (who describes this façade as ‘rather gauche’) tells us that there’s a local tradition that the building was the work of a pargetter named Shepherd. That’s odd, as pargetting (the art of decorative exterior plasterwork) is native to eastern England. It’s not something you see much round here, where the decorative medium is stone. And yet the exuberance and richness of the carving, especially the flowers, is not unlike the sort of thing you might see on a pargetted house in Essex or Suffolk. It certainly sticks out here, not in the manner of a sore thumb, but like an elegantly manicured digit raised in defiance of convention. Stow off the wall.

As an extra, I add a photograph taken earlier this year showing a detail of one of the stone benches positioned in front of this building. As you can see, they are supported by rather fine lions. A few months ago some protective tape had been put around them – I’m not sure if it’s visitors or the stonework that was being protected, though. 

Stow-on-the-Wold, Gloucestershire

Tall tales

There is a tendency to label buildings like this ‘follies’. It’s a Gothic tower, but it’s pretty clear that it’s not part of a medieval castle – those pointed windows are not the kind of openings you’d see on a castle, nor are the little trefoil decorations, nor the very neat quoins. The Y-tracery of the windows is a typical device of Georgian or Regency Gothic-on-the-cheap – you get a ‘Gothic’ effect without spending too much time or money on elaborate carved tracery. So, we conclude, it’s the work of a Regency gentleman having a bit of fun.

And so it was. This is Enoch’s Tower, built by a Mr Enoch in 1828, as a carved date stone on the front tells us. But it’s a bit more than this, and labelling it as a folly is only part of the story. Richard Enoch (1771–1856) was said to have been in royal service and moved to Stow in the early-19th century. He was a collector, especially of Egyptological items, and had a house nearby. He built the tower to house his collection of antiquities – it was, in fact, a museum. The collection, alas, has vanished, and no one seems to know what was in it. There was a story that a cedar of Lebanon  nearby was grown from a seed found in an Egyptian sarcophagus, but that may be a legend – as, almost certainly, is the story that there was an underground passage linking the tower with Enoch’s house. Another story relates that Enoch planned to build a matching tower on the other side of the road and link the two by building a triumphal arch across the highway. That too sounds like a tall story – and conjures up in the mind’s eye an interesting clash of architectural styles. But as I read these stories I am starting to like Mr Enoch, and I imagine that he was not above spinning some of the yarns himself. Battlements, Y-tracery, little trefoils, interesting tall tales. Perhaps folly is not too far off the mark after all.

Stow-on-the-Wold, Gloucestershire

Stone roses

There are some buildings that just make me smile, no matter how often I see them. This is one: a house of about 1730 (now a café) on the market place in Stow on the Wold. What I love about this house is the decoration. It’s Classical, up to a point – look at the fluted pilasters with their Corinthian capitals. But whoever built this place was determined not to stick to the rule book. Those pilasters begin, not with a base, anchoring them to the ground, but with a peculiar block of stone sticking out from the wall, a couple of feet above pavement level. The strips that run up from either side of the central niche, dotted with carvings of flowers, are another odd, but charming, touch.

Pevsner (who describes this façade as ‘rather gauche’) tells us that there’s a local tradition that the building was the work of a pargetter named Shepherd. That’s odd, as pargetting (the art of decorative exterior plasterwork) is native to eastern England. It’s not something you see much round here, where the decorative medium is stone. And yet the exuberance and richness of the carving, especially the flowers, is not unlike the sort of thing you might see on a pargetted house in Essex or Suffolk. It certainly sticks out here, not in the manner of a sore thumb, but like an elegantly manicured digit raised in defiance of convention. Stow off the wall.