This honest house on St Mary’s Lane is a relic of Tewkesbury’s eighteenth-century prosperity. It is a rare survival of a house designed for framework knitters or stocking makers, recognisable by its long, first floor window to light the knitting frame (and now the sitting-room). Weaving was an organised but domestic trade – each stocking maker had his own knitting frame, kept in his home, on which he did piecework while his wife and children carded and span the yarn. Stocking making provided the main employment in the town through the eighteenth century, until the quantities of cotton thread provided by Richard Arkwright’s factory experiment at Cromford gave the Nottingham stocking knitters the edge over those using Cotswold wool.

This is one of several tall and well-made houses that suggest the living was a decent one. Above and below the weaver’s workroom were rooms for the family and there is a small yard at the back. When we took on the row in 1969, their roofs were falling in. We repaired the row and gave one to the local preservation society to further its cause.St Mary’s Lane is a quiet side street, a short walk from Tewkesbury Abbey and another Landmark, Abbey Gatehouse.

The cottage is light and cheerful, its steep, winding corner stair still in place and leading up to a fine view across Tewkesbury’s marvellous roofscape to the abbey. The town lies in the vale bounded on one side by the Cotswolds and on the other by the Malvern Hills – both are in easy reach, as are the Regency and equine delights of Cheltenham. Tewkesbury itself has much to offer in that quiet, grounded way of our historic towns: an ancient battle site; the watery activity of the Avon and Evensong; if you wish, in the lovely abbey.

View our history sheet for this Landmark

Sleeps: 4