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In I go?  In spite of the fact that it has a handful of houses and a charming but over-restored church, the Cotswold village of Stanway is one of the richest sources of architectural enjoyment for miles around. Glorious Stanway House , J M Barrie’s wooden cricket pavilion , my favourite war memorial , and a length of churchyard wall of more than usual antiquarian interest are just a few of the highlights.* Here’s another, and one of the best: the gatehouse to Stanway House. This 17th-century stunner, probably dating to the 1630s, is built in the rich ashlar, golden verging on orange, of the rest of the village. It displays that blend of old and new styles that appears so often in the early-17th century – Tudorish bay windows, ornate shaped gables, and a more Stuart-looking Classical door surround; the door opening itself has another Tudorish feature, the flattened four-centred arch, and above it are Tudor-looking roses in the frieze. The finials to the gables are scallop shells, wh...

Retrospective (2): A handful of fragments As my next short sequence of backward-glancing links to celebrate ten years of blogging , I'm concentrating on fragments – those broken bits and pieces that can tell us so much about history – or occasionally fox us – while also being so evocative. Whether it's bits of medieval stained glass or chunks of old masonry, such unregarded scraps have often surfaced on the English Buildings blog over the last ten years. Here are a few you may have missed... Tantalising bits of stained glass in Oxfordshire Old bits of pottery put to architectural use in Northamptonshire Traces of a mason's yard in Shrewsbury A revealing broken pinnacle in Somerset A whole wall of fragments in Gloucestershire .