English: Round house at Marston Meysey, Wiltshire, built in 1790 for the Thames and Severn Canal as a lengthsman's cottage. The listing describes it as being built of pebbledashed brick with limestone dressings to doors and windows, but a survey for the Cotswold Canals Project says it was built of rendered rubblestone with ashlar band courses at the upper floor levels and stone Gothic Revival surrounds to windows and doors. (Archive) It originally had a funnel-shaped lead roof to collect rainwater for use in the cottage. The ground floor was used for stabling, with the upper two floors for living accommodation. There is a fireplace on the first floor and a staircase to the top floor within the wall thickness. When the canal company no longer needed the building after the lengthsman had been transferred to a new house at Eisey Lock in 1831 (see SU1295 : Lock-keeper's cottage, Eysey lock, Thames & Severn Canal), the roundhouse became derelict. In 1986 an extension was added to the roundhouse. Both bridge and roundhouse are now in the grounds of a private house, and the footpath has long since been re-routed. At the time of my visit, the only viable footpath in the vicinity was that running south to them from the road; the footpaths leading away north-west and east having both been rendered impassable or maybe even destroyed by gravel extraction.