Tremeer and terraces in garden to east

Tremeer and terraces in garden to east

A large house with origins possibly dating to the 16th century, with records tracing back to the 1430s. The building was partly altered in the early 17th century and rebuilt in 1798 for a Dr. Reed. It was extended in 1899 for the Hext family by architect William Bonner Hopkins. The construction uses slatestone rubble and snecked granite, with slate hanging on the south east and south west elevations and rendered finish on the north east front. The roof is double span slate with gable ends and rendered axial stacks, with a projecting lateral kitchen stack.

The house follows a complicated triple pile plan with several thick internal cross walls. Evidence of blocked seventeenth-century fireplaces survives in the cellar, and a late sixteenth-century fireplace remains on the ground floor, suggesting that the house was probably only partly rebuilt in 1798. The main entrance is on the north east elevation, with a rear entrance on the south west and garden front to the south east. The building is constructed into a slope with ground rising to the north west, and a large cellar extends beneath most of the house. The main entrance leads into a stair hall and beyond into a large colonnaded vestibule in the centre, with a further stair hall to the rear. To the south east, two reception rooms overlook the garden, heated by an axial stack with back-to-back fireplaces, with a study to the rear left. To the north west is a further reception room heated by an axial stack, with a kitchen to the rear right heated by a rear lateral stack. Service rooms were accommodated in the cellar.

An early nineteenth-century engraving shows the south east garden front with a canted bay window continuing the full height and a single rather than double roof span. The 1899 remodelling altered the north east elevation with a shallow canted bay projection and remodelled the canted bay on the south east garden front, executed in Arts and Crafts style.

The north east front of 1899 is in the Arts and Crafts style, with two storeys, cellar and attic. A symmetrical twin-gabled front displays three-light attic windows with ventilation slits above in the gables. The ground and first floor project with a canted two-storey porch at the centre, flanked by two-light windows on the left and four-light windows on the right. The doorway has a semi-circular open pediment containing the Hext coat of arms with date and motto in a cartouche, with a cambered head. The doorway is flanked by very small single light windows, and the first floor window above has three-lights flanked by two-lights in the canted sides of the porch. All windows have granite frames and iron casements with leaded panes; ground floor windows have transoms.

The south east garden front has two storeys, cellar and attic. To the left of centre, a canted bay window to the cellar continues as a curved bay window above, terminating in a gable that rises above the parapet of the main range. Two- and three-light mullion and transom windows are positioned to right and left. A Venetian window with granite surround lights a nineteenth-century stair on the south west elevation.

Inside, the east reception room contains a circa late sixteenth-century roll moulded granite fireplace with a segmental arch decorated with a triangle and ball motif, and an 1904 Art Nouveau copper hood. The north reception room has an exceptionally large fireplace with bolection moulded surround, raised and fielded panel above, and a ceiling with plastered chamfered intersecting beams with moulded cornicing. An early nineteenth-century open well stair on the south west has turned newel and stick balusters with ramped rail on the first stage, with upper stages being plainer with rectangular stick balusters. A circa 1899 open well stair on the north east, made of pine in late seventeenth-century design, features flat splat balusters, square newels and heavy moulded rail. A first floor bedroom on the west has a late eighteenth-century cast iron grate.

The terraced gardens on the south east are possibly seventeenth century in origin and were remodelled by Major General E.G.W. Harrison in the 1940s. Several flights of granite steps are set with granite piers and stone rubble circular piers with moulded caps.

The house was marked by Norden in circa 1584 as the seat of Edward Lowre. It was the birthplace of Sir William Lower, an author who died in 1662, and of Richard Lower, a physician who died in 1690. Richard Lower was physician in ordinary to Charles II, published various medical works, and was associated with the first blood transfusion. The Hearth Tax returns of 1662 record eight hearths. After the Second World War, Major General E.G.W. Harrison lived at Tremeer and was responsible for the design of the gardens.