Barn Park

Barn Park is a house, now divided into two dwellings, dating to the 1820s, with possible earlier origins, and extended in the mid-19th century. It is constructed of slate stone rubble, with a rendered and stuccoed front elevation, and has a slate roof with a gable end on the front left and a hipped end on the front right. A brick stack sits in the valley between the left and right-hand ranges, and there is a projecting side lateral stack on the right.

The house has an ‘L’ shaped plan. The right-hand range features an entrance leading to an entrance hall, a reception room to the left, a central stair hall, and a main reception room across the rear of the range. The left-hand range comprises a service range, extended in the mid-19th century. Additional service rooms, including a dairy and wash-house, are located in the basement. Bedrooms on the first floor of both ranges lead off a central landing.

The building is two storeys high with a basement. The front has a regular 1:2 window arrangement. A mid-19th century gable end extension on the front left has a partly blocked opening with a dressed stone segmental arch and 20th-century glazed doors on the ground floor, and a replacement sash window above, set within a similar arched opening. The right-hand range is set back and flanked by incised pilaster strips, with the right-hand section projecting. It has a renewed 12-pane sash window and a 20th-century panelled door in a partly blocked opening, and two renewed 12-pane sashes on the first floor. An insurance plaque from “West of England, Exeter” is affixed to the front elevation.

The interior retains many 19th-century features, including moulded cornices, doors, and doorcases with reeded architraves. A mid-to-late 19th-century marble chimneypiece is in the main reception room, and an open-well staircase features simple turned newel posts, stick balusters, and a moulded handrail. A timber back staircase is also present. The basement contains a copper and dairy, largely intact. The first floor features an ornate plaster rose above the stair wall, plaster carbelled brackets to three arches on the landing, and moulded cornices.

Barn Park was once the residence of John Rosevear, a general merchant who was responsible for the construction of Boscastle Chapel in 1801 and its subsequent rebuilding between 1823 and 1825. Rosevear was a controversial figure within the Camelford and Wadebridge Methodist circuit. Later, it was the residence of W.S. Rosevear, a Deputy Lieutenant and Magistrate of Cornwall in the 1870s.