Princes House

Princes House is a town house dating to circa 1740, designed by Thomas Edwards for William Lemon and considered one of the finest houses in Truro when built. A porch, steps, and a dwarf boundary wall were added in 1893 by S.J. Polkinhorn, designed by Silvanus Trevail. The house is constructed of granite ashlar at basement level, dressed freestone with a late 19th-century porch, and painted brick with freestone dressings above, with a hidden roof behind a parapet and brick end stacks.

The building follows a double-depth plan, with a central entrance hall leading to a large stair hall to the right and a reception room to the left. Behind is a large “saloon,” with a service stair and service room located behind the main stair. It is symmetrical in design, featuring a five-window street front. A central porch with a round-arched doorway has an entablature that projects forward over two pairs of Corinthian columns, whose bases are linked to quadrant-on-plan stone balustrades of a broad flight of entrance steps. The basement has flat arches with projecting keyblocks. Other architectural details include rusticated quoins, a mid-floor platband, a first-floor sill string, and a modillioned cornice to the parapet. Original sash windows remain, with thick glazing bars and some crown glass, set within Gibbs surrounds to the ground floor and moulded architraves above. The rear elevation is also complete.

The interior retains fine carpentry, joinery, and plasterwork. The entrance hall features Ionic columns, and there’s a mahogany open-well staircase with a key motif, egg and dart, and dentilled soffit, with square panelled newels, a ramped handrail, and heavy turned balusters. The stair hall has plasterwork with deeply carved acanthus decoration to oval ceiling panels, plaster wall panels with decorative pediments and drapes, and a Vitruvian scroll to the frieze. Doorcases are elaborate, with pulvinated friezes and cornices or pediments; the intricately carved doorcases feature prominently in the rearmost room, the saloon, which also includes an elaborate Rococo plaster ceiling and cornice and a fireplace with a pedimented overmantle and intricately carved window architraves. Other rooms are well detailed. A service stair of painted pine has a closed string, turned balusters, a moulded handrail, and square newels. Following William Lemon's death, his agent Thomas Daniell acquired Lemon’s mining and mercantile interests and built a similarly imposing house in the same street, employing Edwards as architect. An architect’s drawing by Silvanus Trevail is held in the Cornwall County Record Office.