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Banging Down the Doors
to Northleach House of Correction
Article researched and written by Caroline Fisher for Cotswold Times © May 2015
NORTHLEACH’S House of Correction wasn’t somewhere you wanted
to spend much time 200 years ago - but current custodians hope
people will be banging down the doors to get in, if a state-of-the-art
transformation gets the go-ahead. This month (June 2015) the
Friends of the Cotswolds are bidding for a Heritage Lottery Fund of
£3.3m towards a £5m radical refurbishment of the centre, designed
to put it firmly on the map.
The Friends of the Cotswolds bought the run-down and neglected
Grade 2 listed building from Cotswold District Council in 2013,
planning to re-launch it as a true gateway to the Cotswolds Area of
Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB), and a destination in its own
right. They are working with their tenants the Cotswolds
Conservation Board (CCB) who run the venue, and the Cotswold Lion
Café manager Jess Hughes, to provide visitors and local people alike
an emotional connection with the environment.
“If you’re coming to the Cotswolds we want THIS to be the place you
must come and see first,” said CCB director Martin Lane. “Here
you’ll find all you need to know about the area - where to go and
how to get there. We’ll explain what makes this special landscape
tick, what you might see and how it changes with the seasons.”
CCB Director Martin
Lane with Café
manager Jess Hughes
at the back of the
building.
Below: A painted
cart and a
shepherd’s hut are
part of the display
of farming artefacts
and tools
The building is ‘crying out for an imaginative revamp’
Cutting-edge new buildings will give a ‘wow’ factor to the present
rather dour and uninspiring site, which is crying out for an
imaginative revamp. The outdated plot on the busy A429 Fosseway
houses the Escape to the Cotswolds Discovery Centre and Cotswold
Lion café –both clad in draughty single-paned glass – complete with
prison cells and a courtroom. The old police station is sub-let as
private offices and the CCB has its HQ above the courtroom. Across
a large grassed courtyard languishes the nationally-important Lloyd
Baker Collection of Rural Life featuring agricultural artefacts
including waggons, farm machinery and tools. The fascinating
farming bygones are cordoned off in a 1980s semi-circular open
shed with a corrugated asbestos roof. Evocative shepherds’ vans are
also behind barriers.
A sweeping new glass-fronted gallery will give a shining showcase
for the Lloyd Baker exhibits. It will feature an impressive central
two-storey building, acting as a facility for rural skills courses, giving
stunning views up into the valley. The café and Discovery Centre will
be revitalised inside new alluring and eye-catching modern glass
structures. The new-look architecture is designed to complement
and set off the existing historical core of the building.
There’s a rich story to tell
Mr Lane said: “The old gallery was open to the elements and fell a
long way short of modern-day curatorial care. We’ll have the
opportunity to take down the wooden fence barriers which said
‘look but don’t touch’ and have staff on hand to make our display
really interactive. There has been little or no interpretation of the
Lloyd Baker Collection, so we’ll help it to come alive with audio
visuals. The carts grew out of the landscape, built to control the
brush on the high wold – let’s explain the design features and it was
actually like working the land.
The panelled Court Room
The panelled Court Room
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