Plan to undo ‘destructive’ changes to prominent Ross-on-Wye building

The grade II listed, two-and-a-half-storey St Mary’s Cottage is the only residential property in Church Row, Ross-on-Wye, which faces the town’s landmark St Mary’s Church across its churchyard amid a cluster of heritage-listed properties.

“Currently the house internally is in a bad state,” the planning application (number 242725) by owner Isabel Gill says, with a “dilapidated” kitchen, “rotten” windows and “inadequate” heating and insulation.

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Her plan is to rearrange the internal layout, add new bath and shower rooms, a kitchen, utility room and cloakroom, and to bring the cellar into use. It would have four bedrooms as before.

“The cottage is crying out for some attention on the outside too,” Mrs Gill’s application says, with replacement rendering and detailing, windows and doors also proposed, along with a new slate roof with additional skylight at the front, making it “more in character with the buildings that surround it”.

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With no direct road access to the house, a skip would have to be taken in and out across the churchyard, it adds.

An accompanying heritage report says the house was “destructively renovated” in the 1970s – after it was listed – with the “complete loss of architectural detailing” at the front, cement rendering on the rear, an asbestos/concrete-tiled roof and a modernised interior.

Comments on the planning application can be made until January 12.