The English Garden House

The English Garden House

A Classical garden building, later used as a bath house and subsequently as a dwelling, built by 1729 for Richard Edgcumbe (later 1st Lord Edgcumbe, 1680–1758) on the Mount Edgcumbe estate. The building was extended around 1809 and again in the early 20th century.

The building is constructed of rendered stone and brick with slate roofs featuring lead rolls to the hips and ridge. It follows a rough T-plan with an additional cross-range to the rear.

Exterior

The building is a single storey in Classical style with hipped roofs. The main south elevation is arranged in a pattern of 1:1:1 bays. The central bay, which was the first to be built, was designed by copying Serlio and Palladio's illustrations of the Temple of Vesta at Tivoli. This bay breaks forward, its roof extending over a centrepiece with Roman Doric pilasters and entablature featuring triglyphs and guttae. The entablature breaks forward again with a pediment at the centre, supported on Roman Doric columns. The central tapered doorway has a pulvinated frieze, cornice, and later multi-paned glazed double doors. The later bays to either side each have a multi-paned glazed door in lugged and tapered architraves with a recessed panel above. The cornice continues to right and left of the centrepiece without a frieze and is supported at the corners on rusticated pilasters. Each return has a blind lugged and tapered recess matching the flanking openings in the main elevation, with a similar recessed panel above.

The rear sections are irregular. To the rear of the western room is an attached, roughly square bath house addition with a brick stack, an eight-over-eight hornless sash window to the north, and a pyramidal roof. To the west side is a small early-20th-century addition with a three-over-six sash window. An early-20th-century infill range adjoins the main central block to the north, with a pyramidal roof, a central entrance door to the west side, and multi-paned timber windows to either side and above, reaching the eaves. This block links the main building with a mid- to late-19th-century range set into rising ground, which has segmental-headed, single-pane windows to either side and a deep pent roof with rooflights. A tall brick stack rises from the centre of the range at the junction with the infill block.

Interior

The main entrance gives access to the central entrance hall, which occupies half of the earliest part of the building dating from around 1729. The entrance hall has a stone-flagged diamond-set floor with slate squares at the junctions and slate flags to the margins. The entrance doorway features a panelled doorcase and pylon architrave moulded in three orders with a moulded entablature. The pulvinated frieze is deeply carved with oak leaves and acorns, and the cornice with egg-and-dart. The chair rail is carved with a Vitruvian scroll, and the skirting boards have foliate carved decoration. The room has a heavy modillion cornice with highly detailed Classical mouldings. The ceiling is deeply coved above the cornice with a central flat circular lantern (removed for safety at the time of inspection but retained within the building) and scrolled moulding defining the edges of the flat ceiling surface.

Slightly-splayed door openings provide access right and left into the east and west rooms. These doorcases are elaborate, their architraves matching that to the entrance door and extending upwards to encompass a tympanum over each door. Above this, rising to the cornice, is a further carved-timber recess with egg-and-dart moulding, scrolled ears and foliage.

A doorway set centrally in the rear wall gives access to the inner hall, occupying part of the remainder of the early-18th-century building. This has matching skirting boards and chair rails, and a large Classical fireplace in its rear wall with eared and shouldered surround featuring detailed carving of Classical, floral and foliate motifs. The cornice is similarly detailed. The fireplace is flanked by doors into small rear rooms with flat-moulded architraves. Above each is a carved male profile portrait roundel with laurel wreath surround. A six-over-six sash window with moulded architrave is installed in the ceiling to borrow light from a skylight.

Small rooms occupying the remainder of the original building lie to either side and the rear of the chimney breast. Each room has a high circular window divided into five panes, shown on an early engraving of the building around 1737. The wall in which these windows are set is the original rear wall of the garden house.

The square east and west rooms at the southern end of the house, added in the early 19th century to flank the main entrance hall, have reeded architraves and moulded cornice. The east room has a chair rail, absent in the west room. Both have narrow-boarded floors. The east room contains an inset built-in cabinet with arched top including a small metal ventilator. The wall surface above chair rail height is covered with battens mounted with stretched fabric onto which is pasted hand-painted wallpaper, largely hidden behind 20th-century hardboard. The cornice is reeded with floral motifs at the corners. The west room, whose cornice is moulded with a floral scroll, has a very wide and high apsidal alcove in its northern wall, forming a large niche extending beyond the depth of the wall to the room beyond.

The room accessed from the inner hall is the former bath house, dating from around the second quarter of the 18th century. Set into the floor and occupying most of its area is a large oval bath constructed from Ashburton marble, incorporating steps down from floor level and built-in seats at either end. In the centre of the western wall is a deep niche with apsidal head. The south wall has later floor-to-ceiling cupboards concealing a wide projecting niche constructed later in the adjoining room. A three-by-four light window is set into the ceiling in the same way as the adjoining inner hall.

Built against the northern wall of the original range, an infill block dating from the early 20th century houses the present kitchen with a high wide fireplace opening and quarry-tiled floor. The chimney stack is shared with the earlier cross-range to its rear, which is set lower and reached by steps from the kitchen. This range, possibly dating from the later 19th century, has exposed purlins and a rather crude brick fireplace with a 19th-century grate.