A Georgian Gothic-style country house that became a boarding school and time share apartments

The asking price of £2 million for Stouts Hill, on the outskirts of Uley village, appears somewhat modest in today’s property market. According to Knight Frank, Stouts Hill is an impressive Grade II* Strawberry Hill Georgian Gothic-style country house time share club/resort which sits in a stunning valley in the Cotswold Hill escarpment, surrounded by 22 acres. Subject to planning there is potential to convert the house back into a substantial family home. Stouts Hill was converted into timeshare apartments in 1979 and is currently arranged as 8 reception rooms, 9 apartments and 5 two bedroom cottages. The Stouts Hill Club Limited will cease operation on point of sale and subject to planning there is the potential to convert the house into a stunning family home.

The historian, Nicholas Kingsley, in his ‘The Country Houses of Gloucestershire’, says Stouts Hill was bought in 1697 by Timothy Gyde, a clothier. In 1716, it was settled on his son Thomas who died in 1743. It passed to his son, Timothy Gyde II, ‘a man of different outlook to his father’. He built a new house, probably constructed by William Halfpenny, ‘entertained lavishly, kept a mistress, gambled, and paid insufficient attention to his business’. The inevitable meant that it was bought in 1785 by the Rev. William Lloyd Baker who lived here until his death in 1830. His son, Thomas Barwick Lloyd Baker, bought Hardwicke Court, near Gloucester, and Stouts Hill was used as a secondary home, occupied by a relation, Colonel Benjamin Chapman Browne, whose family remained until the early part of the 20th century. The Colonel’s son, Sir Benjamin Chapman Browne, was later Mayor of Newcastle-upon-Tyne and chairman of the Tyneside engineering and shipbuilding firm of Hawthorn, Leslie & Co Ltd.

Stouts Hill was let by Olive Lloyd Baker to the Hardinge Preparatory School who transferred here in 1935. ‘The picturesque and delightfully situated house has been modernised, is equipped with central heating and is in excellent order‘. Not that ‘delightful’, as it would appear to have been empty for two years, with no electricity or main drainage. It became known as Stouts Hill School, whose notable boarders later included Captain Mark Phillips and the actor Stephen Fry, closing in 1979.