Hengar

Hengar is a country house, now converted into a restaurant and part of a holiday complex, located in St Tudy. Rebuilt in 1905 following an extensive fire in 1904 that destroyed the earlier house on the site. The building was constructed for Sir William Wallace Rhoderick Onslow.

The house is built of granite ashlar with granite and freestone dressings, featuring steeply pitched slate roofs. It is constructed in Tudor style and rises to three storeys with an attic storey. The plan comprises a main range of single depth flanked by two cross wings, with a large service range to the rear left. The central entrance leads through a single storey porch directly into a huge reception hall, which is lit from front and rear by large windows and heated by fireplaces in axial stacks at either end. An impressive imperial stair rises opposite the entrance, continuing across the rear wall to landings that provide access to the main reception rooms on the first floor of the cross wings. The service rooms are accommodated in the tall rear left wing, heated by an end brick stack. The main range also features granite ashlar axial chimney stacks.

The exterior presents a symmetrical 3:5:3 window front with a single storey porch featuring stepped angle buttresses, moulded strings, parapet and a 4-centred arch to the door. The two shallow projecting wings are gabled to the front with parapet coping decorated with ball finials. The central range displays two 3-light and two 2-light granite mullioned windows flanking the porch, with five tall mullion and transom windows above lighting the entrance hall and stair. Five gabled full dormers light the attic above. The wings to either side have three adjoining mullion and transom windows lighting the reception rooms on the first and second floors, and small slit openings lighting the gable ends of the attics. On the right hand side elevation, the ground floor of the cross wing features an arcade of five round-headed arches, glazed with a late twentieth-century door in the centre. Above this are three mullion and transom windows on the first floor and three 2-light mullion windows on the second floor, with two gabled full dormers to the attic. The rear service wing, which rises three storeys and an attic with a shallow two-storey range adjoining, incorporates several pieces of reused dressed granite from the earlier house, including a 4-centred arch with carved spandrels.

The interior retains an impressive large entrance hall with original freestone Gothic chimney-pieces featuring 4-centred arched openings flanking the space. The imperial stair displays a closed string, moulded rail, square newels and carved balusters, rising from opposite the entrance and continuing across the rear wall. Doorcases throughout feature 4-centred freestone arched openings, several with carved spandrels decorated with ball motifs. The entrance hall remains largely unaltered, although the reception rooms and service wing have undergone some alterations involving the removal and insertion of partitions.

Historically, the earlier house at Hengar, together with the demesne lands, formed part of the manor of Penrose Burden in St Breward parish. It was anciently the seat of the Billings, alias Trelawder, a family that subsequently carried the property to the Trelawnys of Coldrinnick. In 1662 the property was taxed for eight hearths. In 1847 it was bequeathed to Sir Henry Onslow.