There is a tradition that the present house was built at a considerable distance from the old Grange and that parts of the old materials were used in its construction. Who its builder was is uncertain. It may have been Nathaniel Jeffreys, who between 1771 and 1775 formed the present estate by buying up two distinct properties. One, representing the remains of Little Wormington Manor—a large part of which had gone to Pembroke College, Oxford, early in the eighteenth century—was acquired by him from the Rev. John Partridge, the last of a long succession of squire parsons, who were vicars of Wormington; this included “ a capital mansion house.” The other, which he bought from Lord Aylmer, appears to have been originally part of the Hayles Abbey grange lands, and had been acquired by Lord Aylmer’s grandfather in 1717 from Thomas Perry of Cirencester, who had bought it from the Dastons, an old Wormington family. Lord Aylmer scarcely enters into the story of the Grange, but as he was married at the adjoining village of Didbrook, it is worth mentioning that he was the father of the Rose Aylmer of Landor’s exquisite lines. If Nathaniel Jeffreys built the older part of the house —and a date in the 1770’s is not inconsistent with the character of the garden front—he did not live long to enjoy it. In 1787 the whole property was bought by Samuel Gist, a Bristol merchant, and it remained with his family until 1905. The purchaser does not appear to have altered the house, but his son, Josiah Gist, who succeeded him in 1815, almost doubled the size of the building by the additions which he made in 1826 and 1827.
In going from Cheltenham to Stratford, Wormington lies off the left-hand side of the road, about midway between Winchcombe and Broadway. Approached by a long avenue, the Grange looks out over sloping lawns across a lake towards the hills by which Winchcombe is half encircled. Nearer at hand, to the west, is the isolated hill of Dumble- ton, one of the outliers of the Cotswolds. It is the older front with the twin bows (Fig. 1) that has this south-westward aspect on to the gardens and lake. The house, before the 1826 additions, was of quite modest dimensions, compact and symmetrical, except for an office wing running out behind. The entrance is dignified with a little pedimented porch having a triglyph frieze. Othenvise the front is unadorned, but its severity is pleasantly relieved by the magnolias, cotoneasters and other climbers which clothe without completely swathing the naked stone.
When Josiah Gist enlarged the house in 1826, he made his extension on the south-east side, turning this into the entrance front. His architect was Henry Hakewill, whose plans remain in the house. The son of John Hakewill, a landscape and decorative painter, he was one of three brothers all of whom were architects. Like Wilkins and so many of his contemporaries, he practised both a Greek and a mediaeval manner. The early Gothic buildings at Rugby School are his. In London he was responsible for St. Peter’s, Eaton Square (afterwards re-built by his son) and the curious steeple of St. Anne’s, Soho, with its four clock faces that give the impression of a beer barrel. Among the country houses which he designed were