A Little Guide

We think the cottage is 200 to 300 years old. In fact, it’s really two cottages – one probably nearly 300 years old and one nearer to 200 – that stood separate until the 21st century when they were joined by the previous owners.

We think the older half, the southern end with the front door and the living room, has been both a blacksmith’s forge and a bakery in its history. We found charred old flagstones in the foundations under the front door when renovating, and you’ll see an old bread oven still open to the left hand side of the fireplace. Please don’t use it to bake bread! The Everhot in the kitchen is much better for that. 

That’s why we’ve written this little guide: to give you some hints how to enjoy the house to its full potential, some as obvious as that one, some less so.

It took more than 18 months to renovate the house as sensitively as possible, keeping and uncovering as much of the original character as possible, while adding most of the modern comforts we take for granted, and we thought some of the more characterful elements of the house might be easier to enjoy with a little explanation.


How to find 1 Woodbine Cottage

Woodbine is in Slad village (google map link pop-out thing), on the B4070 road between Stroud and Birdlip. Heading north from Stroud, look out for the landmark Woolpack pub on your right opposite the church, and keep driving up the hill for another 400 yards. You should pass a fork to the right, to Steanbridge Lane, and continue up the hill to the left less than 100 yards. Stop in front of the Old Chapel on the left hand, and park just past the gates to the Old Chapel and Sunday School on that side of the road. There is a widened road space, large enough for two cars. Woodbine is the house in front of you.

Heading from Birdlip on the B4070, the house is approximately a kilometre from Bulls Cross, and 100m after the cross-roads with the war memorial. Please park on the right-hand side, between the gates to the Sunday School and Old Chapel. 

Please park in as tightly to the side of the road as possible, as the road is quite narrow. 

Park here.

Garden and front door

At the moment, the front garden is a tip full of cotswold stone. Sorry about that – it’s Matt’s fault. There are stairs that go up to the back of the house and garden at the top, but it’s even worse than the front garden right now – so I wouldn’t encourage it!

The front door is a stable-type door, where the top and bottom can be opened separately, although they are generally bolted together from the inside. On a hot day, it’s nice to open the top when you’re inside.

Open the mortice lock at the bottom, followed by the yale-style latch at the top. The door height is about six foot or a little less, so please be careful when going in or out if you’re near that height. People used to be a lot shorter. Also be careful to close the door firmly when entering or leaving, as the door sometimes closes without the latch catching. 


Living room

The first part of the living room is the coat and boot area, for you to take off all your wet and muddy gear after enjoying a perfect English summer day, with stairs on your left to take you up to the bedrooms and warm bath! 

9 things you didn’t know about the living room

  • The cupboard under the stairs is where you’ll find the hoover, random power tools, and some emergency firewood. If there’s something you can’t find in the house, it may be here.
  • There’s also a very old built-in cupboard under the window. The thing you can’t find probably isn’t here. 
  • The Umbrella stand, with probably a couple of umbrellas in it, has a lift-top compartment for keeping keys. 
  • Behind the stairs there’s a hanging corner cabinet, which might have some pint glasses in it, which might come from the woolpack. 
  • The television has two remotes. The small black one connects to the small black box, which gets freeview channels. 
  • The bookcase contains a set of “The Countryman” from the 1920s to the 1980s, plus some other odd books. The books are in chronological order. It took years to do that. 
  • The entrance to the kitchen exposes the steps from the original winding staircase for this cottage, with some games and cooking books.
  • The fireplace. We generally keep newspaper in the old oven to the left, kindling in a brass-coloured bucket, and then an open basket with logs. The cast iron stove has a good airflow: opening and closing the twist valves on the front will increase or decrease the flow, depending on how quickly you want the wood to burn. 
  • There are four cushions in the room with quotes on them. Three from Laurie Lee’s “Cider With Rosie”, written about the Slad valley and his life in the house just down the road. And one from Withnail and I, which has nothing whatsoever to do with the house at all. 

The Kitchen

This should be the warmest room of the house, because it just should, and because it contains an “Everhot” cooker and heater, which, as the name more than implies, is always on, keeping the room warm. There is a door to the outside, for which we haven’t provided keys and should be locked. That’s because we think walking out of that door onto the road could be dangerous, until we have build a small garden wall to prevent accidents. If the cooker is “Everhot”, that door is “Alwaysclosed”. 

Some other things you really need to know about the kitchen.

1. The recycling bins are on the right hand side, near the door. There are three bins there, plus a “composting caddy” which should be on the windowsill above them. Stroud’s recycling regulations are appropriately strict for the town that kick-started the Extinction Rebellion movement, so here’s what goes in the four bins:

2. The Everhot is a very special cooker, made just down the road in Dursley. It looks insanely old-fashioned, but was in fact invented only about 30 years ago, and was the first cooker of its kind you can just plug into a regular kitchen socket. The most important things to know are:

  • There are four places to cook: 1) the hotplate, which is the space to the left under the hood. (2) the simmer plate, which is the narrower space to the right of the hot plate (3) the top oven, which is fairly self-explanatory, and is generally the hotter oven. and (4) the bottom oven, which is cooler.
  • These areas run at a set heat. You can change those temperatures, but it might take hours rather than minutes to change. – Instead, the way to cook with an everhot is to watch and move the thing you are cooking, rather than trying to change the temperature.   
  • If you bring something to the boil, and want to keep it warm, move it to the right.
  • If you are frying something, and it has got a bit hot, move it to the right.   
  • If you want to get it hotter, move it to the left. 
  • The top oven is great for baking, roasting and grilling. There are baking trays in the drawers to the left of the cooker. Most Everhot fans bake a lot of things that people with normal cookers would fry or boil because Everhot ovens retain a lot more moisture, and don’t dry things. Try roasting vegetables. 
  • The bottom oven is great for warming things, like pies from the market, or plates before a meal, or slow-cooking something like porridge overnight or lamb for the full day. Try it out. If it doesn’t work, the Woolpack is down the road.

An Everhot can be a little confusing to start with, and even a little frustrating, as some simple things can take longer. A full kettle might take 10 minutes for example (please always remember to put the whistler down) compared to six or seven for an electric kettle, but please try to ease into using it slowly, and you may see why it’s so preferred.

Try toasting some sourdough bread from Stroud market on the simmer plate while the kettle is boiling, and you’ll have the best tea and toast for breakfast ever.

From there, bigger meals like soups, stews, bakes, grills, are just small fun steps. 

3. Some hidden modern conveniences. If the everhot is a little too much character, there is a microwave in the first cupboard in the kitchen, and tucked away above the fridge (the second cupboard) are an electric kettle and induction hob that can be plugged in and used on the kitchen counter. Under the sink are all the things you’d expect to find under a sink, and to the right of that, there’s a dishwasher. 

We’re not savages. 

4. You should find everything you need to prepare a meal in the rest of the cupboard space. There’s a pantry under the microwave, with random stuff in it and the drawer space to the left of the cooker contains cooking pots, spices, mugs, cutlery and cooking utensils. There are some of those hanging down to the right of the cooker too. Plates are rather obviously displayed on the dresser, which somehow miraculously fits in that space. In the window above the work surface, there should be coffee, tea bags, sugar, a teapot and a probably completely unusable coffeepot. There should be a usable cafetiere in the bottom of the dresser along with glasses for water and wine. If you need more glasses, they’re in the hanging cupboard by the stairs. 

Wine is not included in the house rental, but there might be some left behind above the microwave. Happy hunting!

Upstairs

There are three double bedrooms, two bathrooms, a loft bedroom and a storage, washing and drying room up the stairs. The bedrooms are all pretty straightforward. 

1. The first bedroom on the right has a double bed and a chest of drawers and not much else. Curtains are being made, but not ready yet.

2. The second bedroom is pretty similar but has a spectacularly curvy chimney breast at the entrance and then a spectacularly sloping floor, that if you rolled a marble on it, it would probably never stop, and also a curved wall behind the chest of drawers. Basically, there are very few straight lines in this room. Please note that the legs of the head of the bed are on wooden blocks to make it level. Otherwise you would be sleeping on the same weird shape as the floor. 

3. The third double bedroom is the ensuite, which has a loo and shower as well as micro-basin. 

4. The fourth, loft bedroom is up the incredibly steep stairs with alternating steps, and has two single beds, a writing desk, an antique sled and spectacular views across the valley.

5. The large bathroom is opposite the bedrooms, and has a bath a loo and much larger basin. 

6. The last room is the storage room, where there’s a cupboard for the washer, dryer and boiler. 

Heating

The house shouldn’t get cold (I’m writing this in July, so you never know) as the thick walls are the best insulators and heat regulators, even cooling the house in the summer, but if it does get chilly, the built-in radiators should do the trick. Of course, feel free to light the fire too, using wood from the basket, under the stairs or outside in the wood store.

The other room in the house…

The house comes with one extra room. It’s about 500 yards down the road, on the left hand side, called the Woolpack.  There’s only one way to find out if it’s really this good, and that’s to pop down and try it out.

Enjoy.