Tehidy House

Tehidy House is a country house that was the seat of the Basset family and is now part of a hospital complex. The building represents three distinct phases of construction: 1734 (pavilions), 1863 (conservatory), and 1922 (main range).

The original design comprised a square 3-storey mansion house facing east, positioned in the centre of an east-west rectangle formed by four detached pavilions. During the 19th century, additions extended the rear of the house and linked it to the north-west pavilion; the other pavilion was later demolished. Following a fire in 1919, the original house was cleared, leaving three corner pavilions, the former house's cellars as a sunk garden with the surviving conservatory at the west end, and a new main range built between and attached to the eastern pair of pavilions.

The new main range (1922) is rectangular, two storeys with 4:3:4 bays and symmetrical classical styling. It features a sandstone ashlar construction with a granite plinth of channelled rustication, corner pilasters similarly decorated, and a modillioned cornice. The centrepiece is a pedimented 2-storey porte-cochere with three bays, Tuscan columns on very high pedestals, set-back semi-elliptical arches to the ground floor, wrought-iron railings to the balcony, a modillioned cornice, and an oculus in the pediment. The doorway contains double doors and a doorcase of semi-columns with triglyph frieze and mutule cornice. Windows are sashed, with 18 panes at ground floor and 15 above, all with raised surrounds and keystones. A hipped roof supports a disproportionately high clock tower at the centre of the front slope, surmounted by an octagonal bellcote with domed cap and two chimneys on each side. At each end is a narrow 2-storey link with a round-headed window at first floor.

The east pavilions, surviving parts of the early 18th-century build and now forming crosswings, are of scored stucco painted white. Each is rectangular measuring 3 by 5 bays, with two slightly lower storeys, a first-floor band, cornice and blocking course. They have 12-pane sashed windows at ground floor and low 4-pane sashes above, apparently original with thick glazing bars, all with raised surrounds and keystones. The ground floor window in the third bay of the south pavilion has been altered as a door. Both pavilions have hipped rectangular roofs with four chimneys and a central lantern with large keyed oculus on each side and ogival cap with finial.

The return walls of the east pavilions differ in details. The south is of sandstone ashlar and features a ground floor arcade of round-headed arches with an impost band, containing round-headed windows with altered glazing and doors in alternation, and a lead downspout fixed by brackets decorated with stars. The north pavilion has a central doorway altered as a window and a 19th-century tripartite window to the right.

The rear of the main range includes a round-headed doorway at the centre and canted bay windows in the first, fourth, sixth and ninth bays. The south pavilion's rear displays a large round-arched recess containing a statue of Flora flanked by coved niches containing urns.

The north-west pavilion is linked to the north-east by a long hospital wing in harmonious materials and style. It has inserted double doors in the north wall, a large ventilator attached at first floor, and 19th-century glazing in the windows, but is otherwise similar to the others.

At the south-west corner of the sunk garden, the rusticated basement of the former 1863 drawing room forms a raised terrace leading to the former conservatory, a single-storey 7-bay building raised on a high plinth. It features a 3-bay canted centre, channelled rustication to the plinth, an arcade of large round-headed windows, and balustraded parapet. The interior has painted panels in the coving to the large skylight.

The building was designed in 1734–39 by Thomas Edwards of Greenwich for John Pendarves Basset.