Ashbrook House
Clyro

This fine Grade 2* listed building was from 1865 – 1872 the lodging-house of the famous diarist, the Reverend Francis Kilvert. For many years the building was home to the Kilvert Gallery, created by Elizabeth Organ and Eugene Fisk, and they commissioned a full scheme of restoration of the external fabric. The work included complete re-roofing in natural slate, together with numerous repairs to the original joinery and comprehensive redecoration, including the spectacular 100-pane staircase gothic window. In addition a decorative lead-roofed canopy with a gothic balustrade was made locally and added to the stone-stepped front entrance.

The photographs confirm the outstanding quality of the room settings which existed when the building housed the Kilvert Gallery. They now form a historical record since subsequent owners trashed all these interiors, following the current fashion for deconstruction, more accurately described as destruction, itself justified through a grotesque misinterpretation of the writings of John Ruskin.