“In a typical Cotswold farm, such as Ferris Court…there is a tight geometry of all units, bound together by sympathetic angles…the walls are planar statements, including even the dormers, which belong to the wall itself, not the roof. The pitch of the roof is steep, the better to handle the weight of stone shingles.”

“...Almost all of the area’s buildings are constructed of the oolitic limestone ridge that underlies its wolds (moors). From manors to farmhouses to barns and even stone fences, this material creates a singular homogeneity.

“When foundations and basements are excavated, the limestone undercropping, which is not hard when freshly dug, is carefully cut into blocks to form the walls, sliced into thin slates to make roof shingles, and randomly laid up to create fences, which extend the buildings outward so that they embrace the countryside.”

— G. E. Kidder Smith. Looking at Architecture. p112.