Chris Amies art

Whistling Down Cottage, Woodmancote. Watercolour and marker, 35 x 24.5 cm.
This is not the first time I’ve painted this subject but we are practicing watercolour ahead of the year’s En Plein Air sessions.

 in the days of horse-drawn coaches, the coachman would blow a whistle as he approached Woodmancote, to let people know of his arrival. He would whistle down the hill as he passed the Cottage.

Built in the 18th century and modified in the 19th, it’s Grade II listed and may once have been a granary; it was variously a shop and a cider house (although I don’t think it qualifies as ‘former pub’; there were many small cider houses, many just a cider press in the shed and a window to sell jugs of cider from). It may also have had a part in the history of the tobacco industry around here, with that granary being used to dry tobacco.