Bodriggy House (No.21) Sea Lane And No.42 Bodriggy Street, Including Front Garden Walls

Bodriggy House (No.21 Sea Lane and No.42 Bodriggy Street), including front garden walls

A house of significant historical importance, incorporating 17th-century or earlier remains but largely or wholly rebuilt around 1718, with a slight extension in the late 19th century. The building comprises the main house, a parallel former service range at the rear, and front garden walls.

The house is constructed of granite ashlar to the front elevation and painted rubble elsewhere, with a steep dry Delabole slate roof topped by tall brick chimneys positioned over the gable ends and a tall gabled brick lateral stack over the middle of the original rear wall.

The building follows an overall U-shaped plan with three large rooms positioned at the front flanking a large central hall. Earlier wings extend at right angles to the rear, left and right, with another wing returning from the rear left-hand side of the right-hand wing parallel to the main house. A Victorian wing was added to the right of the right-hand rear wing. The architectural style is Classical with archaic features.

The exterior is two storeys, with a symmetrical seven-window front and central doorway. A plinth, flat arches, and moulded mid-floor string step up as a hoodmould over the doorway. The circa early 19th-century door and windows include a panelled door with overlight and an original 18th-century fanlight above. A 20th-century distyle wooden porch with round-arched hood features a moulded cornice linked to the capitals of the columns. The windows are 12-pane hornless sashes. The left-hand wall of the rear left-hand wing has a pair of 18th-century 18-pane sashes serving a large ground floor opening. The house retains a wealth of panelled doors with fielded panelling and fielded panelled window shutters; some display early 19th-century examples. Eared chimney-pieces and probably 18th-century roof structures are present throughout.

The interior preserves most of its early 18th-century features. A fine open-well open-string stair features scrolled tread ends, column-turned balusters, a moulded ramped handrail, and a dado with raised and fielded panelling. Above the stair is a canopied ceiling with a dentilled lower cornice and a central oval decorated with a winged putto blowing a pipe. Moulded ceiling cornices appear in other rooms, including the chambers, with another central oval in the right-hand room. The original 18th-century stair tower stands behind the left-hand side of the hall, with an outshut behind the hall and the right-hand room (extended circa later 18th century). A probably former two-storey porch at the rear left of the deeper right-hand wing contains a 17th-century chamfered doorway. Nineteenth-century rubble walls run parallel to the front and along the left-hand side, linked to the house at front and rear.

The front garden walls include a low wall parallel to the front with square-edged granite copings and square-on-plan granite monolithic piers. A higher wall at the left features scantle slate coping. The rear wall contains a 17th-century chamfered granite doorway.

Bodriggy was one of the large estates surrounding the estuary of the River Hayle before the town of Hayle proper developed. The estate has been known to the Bodriggy family since as early as 1181. Over the last 800 years, ownership has passed to different families only twice. The house was once the home of Merchant Curnow, the West family (notable for engineering), and the Ellis family of the Hayle Brewery.