Streamleaze Cotage 2008
The address of the house has proved to be very confusing. At various times it has been known as 3 Streamleaze, and numbers 1 and 3 Upper Bath Road.
As you can see from the photo on the left taken in 2008 the house was then derelict. Although there were plans to restore it and make it suitable for community use, it was demolished in 2014 to be replaced by new housing development. The front garden (which is behind the house in the above photo) was landscaped in 2008. It is now open as a Community Garden and is well worth visiting.
Until early 2023 our history of this property only went back as far as the 1840 Tithe Survey. At that time it was part of Plot 328, a house, garden, and orchard owned by Mary Allen and occupied by George Williams. We were excited when we came across the will of Mary Allen (dated 1839) which showed clearly that the property had been The Pest House, a place which we had been trying to locate for a long time. This enabled us to trace the history back a lot further.
A Pest House was a building used for persons afflicted with communicable diseases such as smallpox, tuberculosis, cholera or typhus. It was normally located outside of the town to separate townspeople from contact with the disease and reduce its spread. The location in Upper Bath Road was on the outskirts of the town as it was in the 18th century.
We don’t know when the property was first used as The Pest House, or when it was last used for the purposes of quarantine. Accounts records for the Overseers of the Poor show various entries referring to the Pest House from around 1760. There is a reference in 1766 for ‘white liming the Pest House’. We have yet to determine whether this was to disinfect the building or for any other reason.
Earlier records dating back to 1710 include a lot of references to ‘The Small Pox’ and one reference to ‘the Small Pox House’. Small pox was prevalent in the early part of the 18th century and these records suggest the Small Pox House had the same purpose as the Pest House, but we don’t know whether or not it was located in the same building.
The earliest owner of the Pest House, that we know of, was John Rudge.
John Rudge
We don’t know when John acquired the property or whether it was still being used, or partially being used, as a Pest House when he owned it. John died aged 70 and was buried on 27th February 1777. We know from indentures dated 30th and 31st July 1777 that the Pest House was in the Borough of Thornbury and that it had been inherited by John Rudge. After his death the Pest House, along with other properties, then passed to John’s nephew, John Jones of Ruardean.
The indentures refer to this property as:
‘all that messuage or tenement commonly called the Pest house wherein George Budding formerly dwelt adjoining to the foot way leading from Thornbury to Tytherington on the southward side thereof with the garden and orchard thereto adjoining and belonging and also one orchard called Gromage containing three quarters of an acre (be it more or less) thereto also adjoining which said last messuage or tenement and premises last mentioned are situated lying and being in the Borough of Thornbury and are now in the tenure or occupation of Robert Caddy and William Attewell or their undertenants under certain articles of purchase made by them with John Rudge in his lifetime and remain uncompleted.’
Click here to read more about John Rudge
The Allens
We have no record of how the property passed from John Jones to the Allens. The 1780 land tax record shows that George Allen was the owner and that he continued to own it until at least 1784. It appears that George lived in the property at least for some of the time. We don’t know anything about George, although he may be the one who died in Aust 1797 and was buried in Oldbury.
The next owner was James Allen and the land tax records show James as the owner from 1797 onwards. James’s will dated 1817 shows that he acquired the Pest House from George Allen. We don’t know if there was any connection between George and James.
At the time of James’s will he was described as a yeoman of Morton. The property was described as being ‘all those several messuages or dwelling houses collectively called the Pest House wherein Sarah Croome and Joseph Gough do now dwell with the garden orchard and appurtenances as thereto adjoining and belonging … situate in the Town and Borough of Thornbury … now in the tenure or occupation of the said Sarah Croome and her undertenants’.
Click here to read more about James Allen and his family
James left the Pest House unto his wife Mary Allen for and during the term of her natural life and from and immediately after her decease it was left to their daughter Mary Allen and her heirs for ever.
James died aged 77 on 4th March 1817. Land tax records show his wife Mary as owner up to the time of her death on 4th March 1835 aged 91. During the period of their ownership the Allens let out the property to tenants and their wills indicate that they lived in Morton.
Their daughter, Mary, also lived in Morton and she carried on as owner of the property. Her will dated 1839 refers to ‘all those several messuages or dwelling houses collectively called the Pesthouse wherein Sarah Croome and Joseph Gough formerly dwelt and George Williams, William Walker and blank do now dwell’. It was left to Mary’s niece, Hester Allen.
The rate books from 1859 to 1867 show Hester Allen continued to own the property. From 1876 F.W. Yates was the owner along with a lot of the other properties in this area of town.
The adjoining orchard covered the area which was later used as the site for the Town’s market. Various census records refer to the house as ‘Streamleaze’ or ‘Streamleaze Cottage’. This name comes from the name of the field to the east of the property.
From the time that the Rural District Council first leased and then bought the property from Francis William Yates in 1910 it was used by the family of William Alfred Phillips, a Council employee who drove a steamroller. In documents after the acquisition it was described as the “Engineman’s House”. We have been told that the steamroller was stored outside the house.
The rear of the property
The house was quite a large one compared to many in the older part of Thornbury. A member of the Blenkinsopp family who last occupied the house has speculated that the house may have been two houses at one time. Apparently there was a separate staircase in the rear part of the house. In the early years of the house most of the official records we have seen only mention one house and one family. There may have been an alteration and the house divided into two at some stage in its history. Certainly in the mid 1900’s we have been told of two families sharing the house with Mrs Phillips; Sydney George Smith who is listed as living there in 1946 electoral register and his wife Alice Olivia (who was not listed in that electoral register, but was with Sydney when they were living in North Road in 1950) and the Cavanaghs, a family of Dutch evacuees who also lived with the Hopkins family at Raglan Castle (11 Upper Bath Road). It is possible that this ‘separate’ house may explain why the house is now called number 3. Number 1 may have been the smaller attached bit in the rear.
The Council apparently did not spend a great deal of money modernising the building and the bathroom was not added until after 1965 and that apparently was at the occupier’s expense. The photo on the right above shows the front of the house after the doors and windows were eventually replaced by the Council.