Delapre House And Delapre Villa, Including Stable Yard, Coach Houses (Part Of Delapre Villa And Courtyard Cottage Respectively), Garden Walls And Gate Piers

Delapre House and Delapre Villa, including Stable Yard, Coach Houses, Garden Walls and Gate Piers

Former officers' quarters and mess for Bridport Barracks, now two dwellings, on the west side of St Andrew's Road in Bridport.

The building was constructed between 1803 and 1805, probably to the designs of James Johnson and John Sanders of the Barracks Office. It is built of stucco with stucco dressings under shallow hipped slate roofs with rendered stacks.

The building is L-shaped in plan, comprising a main range with a slightly narrower adjoining wing and single-storey range to the rear. It is two storeys tall and designed in classical style with a modillion eaves cornice and a blocking course. In the late 20th century, the building was divided into two dwellings named Delapre House and Delapre Villa.

The symmetrical entrance front faces south-west and features a central doorway with part-glazed doors with moulded panels and an oblong fanlight, sheltered by a Tuscan porch supported on two wooden columns. The doorway is flanked by sash windows with marginal glazing bars set in moulded surrounds. Above the doorway is a casement window with moulded surrounds, and there is a sash window to either side, also with moulded surrounds. The south-east elevation has three ranges of casements in moulded surrounds to the first floor and French doors to the lower floor.

The stable yard to the rear (north-east) is surrounded by coped red brick walls and contains two small red brick coach houses with pitched slate roofs and coped gable ends, placed symmetrically. The left-hand (south-west) coach house now forms part of Delapre Villa, while the opposing former coach house is a separate dwelling called Courtyard Cottage. Gate piers with stone finials mark the entrance to the yard. The grounds are enclosed by red brick walls, which are elaborately ramped along the north side and returned on the road (south-west) side in a double curve to form an entrance.

To the north-east of the house is a late-20th century dwelling called Delapre Lodge, and beyond it is a small 19th-century building converted to a dwelling known as The Old Stables, neither of which is of special interest.

The building was erected in response to Napoleon's threat of invasion, when an extensive network of barracks was established around the English coast. In 1794 the Barracks Department purchased land at this site for barracks construction. The house served as officers' quarters and mess until 1816, when it was sold by the Commissioners of Barracks to a local businessman and renamed Delapre House. A Hanoverian cavalry company had been stationed at the barracks until that sale.