Jewson describes, in his autobiographical reminiscences, By Chance I did Rove (1951), how, having finished his apprenticeship in 1907, he set out with a donkey and trap on a sketching tour in the Cotswolds, 'a part of the country little known at that time'.

Ibberson had recommended him to visit the workshops of Ernest Gimson, who soon took him on as an 'improver', or unpaid assistant and put him to work at making sketches from life and studying the crafts of modelled plasterwork, woodcarving and design for metalwork.

He describes how, as part of his training under Gimson, he was encouraged to draw a different wild flower every day from nature, noting its essential characteristics and adapting it to a formal pattern suitable for modelled plasterwork, wood-carving or needlework.

He writes that he admired in Gimson an assured distinction, traditional in the use of the best craftsmanship and materials, where in design grace of form was combined with simplicity; these are the qualities of his own best architectural work.

And in accordance with Ruskin's advice to Sedding, Jewson always had either pencil or chisel in his hand, acutely involved in the simple craft processes of building, experimenting and practising with delight, familiarizing himself with the qualities of tested materials, tools and techniques, rediscovering, reviving the fabrics, textures and disciplines of traditional construction, from drystone walling in the Cotswolds, and cob, which he used with success on his summer house at Lane End, Kilve, in the Quantock Hills, to twisted gut in a weather-clock set above a row of simple almshouses.

Rodmarton was Ernest Barnsley's most important work; 'probably', Jewson wrote, 'the last house of its size to be built in the old leisurely way, with all its timber grown from local woods, sawn on the pit and seasoned before use.'

He executed church repair work (Chalford, near Stroud, was re-ordered by him), and designs for memorials, inscriptions, headstones, and lettering; also for metalwork, as Gimson had done, including sconces, chimney furniture and gates, and architectural leadwork.

He died suddenly at his house in Sapperton in 1975, aged 91, when the art historian David Gould wrote the following account:His architectural work has a dignity and simplicity in keeping with the traditional Cotswold manner.

Norman Jewson, with Fred Griggs and the poet and essayist Russell Alexander, were a trio of friends whose hearts beat as one in their regard and love for all that was finest in the English tradition.

Always courteous and with a charm which comes from a man at peace with himself, he was a delightful companion, whether on a long ramble through Sapperton woods, or at his own candlelit table where he always had a fund of comic and entertaining reminiscences...Owlpen Manor