In 1937, the novelist Evelyn Waugh and his new wife Laura moved into Piers Court, a Grade II* listed manor house nestled beneath Stinchcombe Hill. The house had history of its own — Parliamentary troops had burned the original medieval manor in 1645 while searching for Prince Rupert on his march from Cirencester to Berkeley Castle. What stands today incorporates remains of that earlier building within an eighteenth-century reconstruction.
Waugh lived at Piers Court for nearly twenty years, and the Cotswold landscape seeped into his work. He wrote Scoop, Men at Arms, and Officers and Gentlemen here, though Brideshead Revisited — often associated with the house — was actually written in 1944 at a Devon hotel while the Court was leased to a convent during the war. The real inspiration for Brideshead was Madresfield Court in Worcestershire, home of the Lygon family whom Waugh had befriended at Oxford.
Waugh was a prickly neighbour. In 1955, two journalists from the Daily Express arrived uninvited at Piers Court after being refused an interview. The resulting public row ended with Waugh successfully suing for libel. But the episode soured him on the place. He also complained that Dursley was 'creeping up to his gates.' By 1956 the Waughs had decamped to Combe Florey in Somerset, where Evelyn died a decade later.
“In 1955, two journalists from the Daily Express arrived uninvited at Piers Court after being refused an interview.”
Today, Piers Court has been reimagined as a countryside retreat. Walkers on the Cotswold Way pass within half a mile of it, though few realise they are treading ground that shaped some of the twentieth century's finest English prose.
