St Loe's Studio, Nailsworth, Gloucestershire

Summary

A stained glass artist’s studio, converted in the late C20 to a cottage; created in 1911 by Sidney Barnsley from an earlier outbuilding for Henry Payne, RWS.

Description

A stained glass artist’s studio, converted in the late C20 to a cottage; created in 1911 by Sidney Barnsley from an earlier outbuilding for Henry Payne, RWS.

MATERIALS
Local limestone, with a Cotswold stone slate roof; the studio room has a cruck beam frame.

PLAN
An L-shaped plan, the former studio contained within the north-south range, and the workshop in the smaller east-west wing, which was the original building on the site.

EXTERIOR
The building is a single storey, the higher main range with a hipped roof, and a fully-glazed north gable end. The long east side has a central, mullioned and transomed, gabled half-dormer window, with a smaller mullioned window. The western side, to which the wing is attached, has the main doorway, with a plank and batten door with wrought-iron fittings. The lower wing has a chimney for the kiln emerging just above eaves height close to the re-entrant angle between the two ranges. Both ranges have large roof lights.

INTERIOR
The interior of the main range is dominated by the two large cruck trusses which Barnsley inserted to create the studio space for Henry Payne. The building has since been converted to domestic use.

History

Studio Cottage is situated in the grounds of St Loe's House (Listed Grade II*), a medieval and later manor house which has been variously known as Seinkley or Seyntcley, or a number of corruptions, including St Chloe and St Loe. It gives its name to the hamlet of St Chloe which forms part of Amberley. In 1698, the estate, which comprised St Loe’s House and 44 acres of land, was sold by Nathaniel Ridler to the Trustees of Nathaniel Cambridge, for the purposes of housing a charity school. The house was altered to accommodate the school, in which use it remained until 1908. In that year, Henry Albert Payne, RWS (1868-1940), the renowned stained glass artist and painter, took a 21-year repairing lease on the house, moving his family from Birmingham and setting up a workshop, and later founding the St Loe’s Guild, modelled on the Bromsgrove Guild of Craftsmen.

Payne was one of the group of artist-craftsmen which formed around Joseph Southall and the Birmingham School of Art in the late C19; he taught at the School from 1889, with a short stint in London as a pupil of Christopher Whall. Following Arts and Crafts principles, Payne installed a kiln at the Birmingham School of Art, so that he could teach the design and manufacture of stained glass as an integrated process. His own work included a number of large and important commissions for churches, and a scheme of wall paintings for Madresfield Court, the outstanding Arts and Crafts house near Birmingham, to which other artists in the group contributed.

In 1909, having moved to Gloucestershire the previous year, Payne engaged Arts and Crafts architect Sidney Barnsley to return St Loe's House from a school to a home, and two years later, commissioned Barnsley to create a studio and stained glass workshop from a small outbuilding on the site. The small, single-storey building was extended by the addition of a new main range, which was constructed using a cruck frame. Sidney Howard Barnsley (1865-1926) moved from his native Birmingham to London at the age of twenty, joining Norman Shaw’s architect’s office; his brother Ernest made the same journey and joined the firm of J D Sedding, where Ernest Gimson was already in training. They thus came into contact with progressive exponents of the Arts and Crafts movement, in which they were to become important figures. In 1892, Sidney, his brother Ernest, and Ernest Gimson resolved to move to the country, and settled in the Cotswolds, first at Ewen near Cirencester, and later at nearby Pinbury Park. They set up their own craft workshops, first at Pinbury but later and more permanently at Daneway House in Sapperton, where the medieval and C17 manor provided suitable inspiration and showroom space for their furnishings, which were designed in a style which revived rural crafts and forms and created an Arts and Crafts movement in the Cotswolds in the period. Their work extended to architecture, in a Cotswold vernacular style which continued the tradition of gabled buildings with Cotswold stone slate roofs and tooled limestone dressings. The Barnsley brothers’ work as architects and designers is renowned; Ernest Barnsley designed the Grade I listed Rodmarton Manor for Hon Claude Biddulph, and both Sidney and Ernest made good-quality alterations and additions to many other buildings in the area, many of which are listed due to the interest they derive from their connections with the Barnsleys. Sidney Barnsley designed the Grade I listed Church of St Sophia in Banstead, Surrey, in his own right, as well as more modest but good-quality cottages, such as those at Gyde Road in Painswick (five pairs, each Listed Grade II).

The studio was converted to living accommodation in the late C20.

Reasons for Listing

St Loe’s Studio, a stained-glass studio and workshop of 1911 by Sidney Barnsley, is listed at Grade II, for the following principal reasons:
* Architectural interest: an imaginative creation of a stained-glass studio, with a large cruck frame and daring fully-glazed gable end to the studio;
* Historic interest: the studio was designed by the eminent Arts and Crafts architect Sidney Barnsley for Henry Payne, a renowned stained-glass artist and mural painter of the Birmingham Arts and Crafts group;
* Group value: with St Loe’s House (listed Grade II*), the house Sidney Barnsley restored for Henry Payne as his home, in whose grounds St Loe’s Studio stands.

External Links

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