The Roundhouse

The origins of the Roundhouse are rather hazy but there are references to it having been a former tollbooth and sweetshop. It may have been a sweetshop providing for children who attended the nearby Pickwick School between 1858 and 1922.

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Before that it may have been built for the Corsham Turnpike Trust. The Devizes and Wiltshire Gazette of 1819 lists gates in the Corsham area including the ‘Pickwick Gate and Side Gate’ but its precise location is not known.

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In 1840 a Toll House keeper in Pickwick was brought before the magistrates at Corsham for demanding 41⁄2d for a metallic spring cart when the legal toll was 3d only.

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The Roundhouse is a rather unusual small stone lodge set in a stone wall with a central stone chimney stack. It is in the form of a simple booth of two-storeys on a circular floor plan with a pyramidal stone tile roof and walls mainly of coursed rubble stone.

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It has square headed windows with casements, no porch but a pointed head doorway just back from the Bath Road. The windows once faced up and down the road but apparently have been blocked up.

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Read the Wiltshire Buildings Record study on this historic building

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With thanks to ‘A History of Pickwick and its buildings’ [unpublished] by John Maloney