Stable Block At Saltram House

The stable block, coachman’s cottage, and coach house date from the mid-18th century and were built for the Parker family as part of Saltram House. The building is constructed of mellow red brick in a Flemish bond pattern, with dry slate hipped roofs. Brick stacks rise from the coach house, coachman's cottage, and an ancillary building. A clock with an octagonal bellcote, featuring an elliptical-arched arcade and a finialed lead dome over a moulded cornice, sits above the entrance passage.

The building comprises a square courtyard with stabling on all sides, with the east side extended to include a coach house on its outer side and a coachman’s cottage at the north end of the adjacent stabling. Additional buildings are attached to the southeast corner. The stable block is largely single-story, though the coachman's cottage has a first floor incorporated within the roof space, and the coach house features squat first-floor windows set under the eaves.

The main entrance is centrally located on the north side, with a triangular pediment adorned with modillion cornices over a likely re-used 17th-century moulded granite doorway, featuring a triple key block. Each five-bay elevation within the courtyard has an impost string above recessed elliptical arches, most with a Diocletian fanlight over a planked doorway. The cottage has three round-arched windows in gabled dormers. The coach house has seven bays with open elliptical arches on its east side.

Internally, the stabling largely retains original features. Stalls on the south side are under plaster crossed barrel vaults springing from octagonal columns. Stalls on the west side feature round-arched stall arcades with unfluted Roman Doric columns and an entablature above the capitals. Stalls on the north side have later cast-iron and boarded ramped stalls, with flanking loose boxes, all with brick floors. One room to the west of the entrance passage has a plaster ceiling with a modillion cornice, while the adjacent room features a moulded cornice. The building is notable for the survival of numerous original features of high architectural quality, making it an important example of an 18th-century stable block.