Boconnoc House

Boconnoc House is a county house of the 16th and 17th centuries, originally the home of the Mohun family. The house was extended after 1719 for Thomas Pitt, Governor of Madras, and further altered in 1772 when a south wing containing a picture gallery was added by Thomas Pitt, 1st Baron Camelford, in association with Charles Rawlinson, a carpenter and joiner of Lostwithiel. The house is reputed to have been repaired by Sir John Soane. It has undergone 19th-century additions and 20th-century alterations, including the demolition of the 1772 wing by Corvell, Drewitt & Wheatley in 1971.

The house is constructed of rubble stone, formerly stuccoed on the east front with ashlar dressings and carved and moulded timber, with slate roofs and brick stacks. It is built in two storeys with garrets and part cellars. Originally L-shaped, the plan has been reduced to an I-shape. The eastern front is nearly symmetrical, consisting of an eight-window section with one-bay 18th-century symmetrical flanking wings. A four-storey 19th-century block adjoins at the north, reduced to three storeys in the 20th century, creating an eleven-window front overall. The kitchens, formerly located beneath the demolished south wing, are now filled in beneath the 18th-century terrace.

The main range, a remodelled 16th and 17th-century structure, features 18th-century refronting with regular fenestration. At the entrance, a large classical timber frontispiece in the fourth opening from the left comprises an entablature with triglyphs and a slightly projecting canopy at stone plat band level, supported by two timber pilasters with Roman Doric caps and bases flanking a pair of three-panel doors with a spoked fanlight and broken cornice. Below is a stuccoed plinth and stone cill course. Three 18th-century tall sashes with internal shutters occupy the right side. Eight 19th-century casement windows with three panes per casement and stone cills stand above on the floor level. All windows have flat stone voussoirs with thin glazing bars. A moulded cornice and parapet partly conceal five flat-roofed dormers with three-pane above three-pane sashes, arranged to accommodate the asymmetrical entrance position.

The flanking wings lack plinth and cill courses. Each features tripartite timber sashes of six panes above six panes in the centre and four panes above four panes under rubble stone segmental voussoirs. On the first floor is a moulded and carved timber Palladian window, perhaps of later design than the 18th century. Ionic columns flank the remains of barred sashes of uncertain pattern. Garret dormers sit above as on the main front. The 19th-century north block features pairs of wood casements, while the south elevation displays barred sashes on each floor under cornice and parapet. A 20th-century return end, where the picture gallery was demolished, has a replica Palladian window at first-floor level. A mansard roof of small slates with lead ridge rolls spans the whole building, with hipped ends over the wings and over the 19th-century north block. The west side of the house has a 19th-century character partly masked by a 20th-century single-storey screen wall. An 18th-century entrance elevation to the cellared kitchens remains below the west end of the terrace.

The interior features a coved and moulded ceiling to the entrance hall with a 19th-century Ionic screen of coupled columns and responds in false work. To the right is a four-bay room on the site of the former hall, retaining fine 18th-century details including an elaborate plaster ceiling with perimeter ribs contained by an enriched pulvinated and modillion cornice. Aedicules with shell heads below an entablature on consoles break forward below the dado, flanking a doorcase set within a pedimented entablature on Ionic fluted pilasters. Plastered picture frames flank a cast-iron grate of circa 1820, with lions' heads and floral drops below between each window architrave. The staircase on the left of the entrance hall represents a 19th and 20th-century attempt at an Imperial staircase in wood, with mural painting to the walls and ceiling in an Edwardian Neo-classical style. Rooms at the south end are fitted out in a similar style, except in the picture gallery anteroom where remaining features and salvaged casing timbers suggest higher quality craftsmanship. The 18th-century ground floor north wing is panelled full height in the billiard room and has a deep cornice of vine leaves of early 19th-century character in the large smoking room immediately to the west. First-floor rooms are generally panelled to dado level in the 18th-century manner.

The house is surrounded by a park of considerable landscape merit from the time of the 1st Baron Camelford. The house is sited in a similar relationship to the Parish Church as Lanteglos House. Soane's repairs have not been identified. The south projecting wing appears once to have extended further to the east. The garrets, roofs, and north block were not inspected during the survey.