Court House, Painswick

The Court House is the tall gabled house on Hale Lane that stands behind St Mary's churchyard in Painswick. A datestone gives 1604, it keeps a panelled court room and a bedroom named after Charles I, and it is listed Grade I. It is a private home, seen from the lane and the churchyard.

History

The house was rebuilt in 1604, the date on its stone, probably keeping the plan of a sixteenth-century house; Historic England's listing names the builder as Thomas Gardener, while the Victoria County History credits the porch of 1604 to John Seaman, chancellor of the diocese of Gloucester. It is said to have stood between the old manor house and the church.

Why the Court House?

The name has been used since 1680. Tradition says Charles I stayed here and held court in 1643, when his troops camped on Painswick Beacon after the failed siege of Gloucester, and one panelled room is still called King Charles's bedroom. The county history doubts the story and thinks the name more likely comes from Court Orchard, the site of the old manor house; our story on the ghost of Charles I tells the tradition.

A meeting house for dissenters

The listing records that in 1689, the year of the Toleration Act, the house was appointed a "conventicle or meeting house", and counts it the first dissenters' chapel in Painswick. The county history gives that year's licence to the town hall instead, used by the congregation that built its own chapel in 1705. Either way, Painswick’s dissenters had a licensed meeting place by 1689. A wing added in 1938 was built to match the old house, and there is a large twentieth-century extension at the north end.

What to see

From Hale Lane you see the entrance front: two gabled wings either side of a recessed middle, a two-storey porch with a broad studded door and a two-light window over it, and stone-mullioned windows under a string course. Behind it rises the taller court room block, with a canted bay and battlements, buttresses and an arched way through. The chimneys stand in diagonal stacks on the gables.

The interior is not open, but the listing describes what makes it Grade I: in the court room a sixteenth-century stone fireplace with figures in the overmantel, complete seventeenth-century panelling with fluted Ionic pilasters and a wide plank floor; an oak spiral stair rising through two floors from the central hall; and King Charles's bedroom, panelled throughout in the seventeenth century, with a moulded stone fireplace.

Visiting

The Court House is a private home, so it is seen from outside only: from Hale Lane, the narrow lane that runs down from the churchyard, and from the churchyard itself. There is no entry charge and no opening time; please keep to the lane and do not go up to the door. Hale Lane is narrow, so watch for cars.

Getting there

The house is in the middle of Painswick, a minute's walk from St Mary's Church on New Street. Park in the Stamages Lane car park (GL6 6UT), a long-stay council car park, or take Stagecoach bus 66 from Stroud or Cheltenham, about hourly Monday to Saturday and every two hours on Sundays. The Painswick and Painswick Beacon walk starts beside the churchyard.

Nearby

St Mary's Church, with its clipped yews and table tombs, is next door, and the Falcon Inn is across New Street. Down Vicarage Street is the Quaker meeting house of 1706, the other chapter in Painswick's dissenting story, and below the town the Painswick Stream runs past the old cloth mills.