Fowey Hall

Fowey Hall is a country house, now operating as a hotel, built in 1898 for Sir Charles Hanson. It occupies an elevated position overlooking Polruan, the village that was Hanson's previous residence. The house is constructed of roughcast render with Portland stone dressings, featuring red tile roofs with stone modillioned eaves cornices, pedimented dormers, and large stone axial stacks with moulded cornices. A lead-domed central bellcote, complete with a turned wooden balustrade and weather vane, crowns the structure, while ogee lead roofs cover the corner towers.

The building follows a large, nearly symmetrical plan, including two cross wings, square corner towers projecting to the front, a parallel range to the rear, and a 20th-century extension to the ground floor of the right-hand return. Designed in a Queen Anne style, the two-story house has a symmetrical 1:1:5:1:1-bay garden front, with the central bays set back between projecting outer bays. A round-arched Tuscan arcade forms a ground-floor loggia, complemented by a turned stone balustrade to the balcony above. The windows are largely 6/6-pane sashes in moulded architraves, with Venetian windows featuring octagonal glazing to the central lights of the ground floor bays to the left and right of the loggia. Round arches with fanlight heads define the openings within the loggia, while segmental arches characterize the other ground floor windows. Original windows and doors remain, with later replacements to the dormers.

The entrance front on the left-hand return, a five-bay design, mirrors the detail of the garden front. A prominent central first-floor window is framed by an open segmental pediment supported by Ionic columns, and a distyle Tuscan porch with an open pediment. There is also a Tuscan porch to the left, with two columns at the front and four on the side, sharing a corner column.

The interior retains high-quality original features in a robust early 18th-century style, including moulded and carved Baroque plasterwork, a plaster barrel vault to the axial passage, and eared, consoled, or bolection-moulded chimney pieces. Other notable elements include numerous pediments, pilasters, and round arches, Ionic columns between spaces of principal rooms, moulded doorcases, panelled doors, oak panelling, and a large open-well staircase with turned balusters.

Fowey Hall is a fine composition in a revivalist classical Baroque manner, situated within a planned garden and occupying a commanding position.