Villa Borghese and Fuchsia Cottage is a Grade II listed building in the Torbay local planning authority area, England. First listed on 10 January 1975. Villa. 3 related planning applications.
Villa Borghese and Fuchsia Cottage
- WRENN ID
- open-cloister-honey
- Grade
- II
- Local Planning Authority
- Torbay
- Constituency
- Torbay MP: Steve Darling (LD)
- Country
- England
- Date first listed
- 10 January 1975
- Type
- Villa
- Address
- Villa Borghese and Fuchsia Cottage, Ridgeway Road, Torquay, TQ1 2ES
- OS grid reference
- SX 926 635
- Coordinates
- 50.46164, -3.5132
- Source
- Historic England listing
Description
Villa Borghese and Fuchsia Cottage are a large villa with garden walls and gate piers, dating from around 1850. Later 19th-century alterations were made, and in 1909 the villa was divided into seven flats.
The villa is built of plastered rubble with a hipped slate roof and stacks with rendered shafts topped by cornices. The garden walls are of local grey limestone rubble, plastered, with plastered gate piers. The design is Italianate, reportedly based on a particular villa.
The main block has a double-depth rectangular plan with an entrance on the south side and a service block to the east. The symmetrical three-window entrance front is complemented by a later three-window canted bay to the right. Deep eaves and verges are supported by paired moulded brackets, and there are stuccoed quoins and a platband. The original entrance front is broken forward in the centre with a gable, and features a deep projecting cornice at first-floor level. The Doric distyle in antis porch has been altered with a round-headed arch cut through the entablature. A half-glazed front door has glazed side panels. The first-floor window above has a proud architrave, sill blocks and a segmental pediment resting on consoles. The triple windows on either side have similar architraves and floating cornices on brackets. The windows are now fitted with 20th-century plate glass sashes, although the ground-floor window on the left has been partly converted into a doorway. A later 19th-century projecting canted bay to the right has one ground floor window converted to a doorway. The service wing on the far right retains tripartite sashes.
The garden return on the left has three ground-floor six-over-nine-pane sashes (one converted into a door) and three first-floor recessed round-headed windows with sunk panels below the sills, moulded architraves and radial glazing bars. Round-headed niches are positioned between the windows, with all openings linked by moulded cornices.
The interior is said to be heavily altered, with the lower part of the staircase having been removed during conversion. Originally named Villa Borghese, as shown on Ordnance Survey maps.
Local climate
Villa Borghese and Fuchsia Cottage receives an average of 870 mm of rain a year. This makes it wetter than 64% of listed buildings in the UK. Its exposure to wind-driven rain is greater than that of 83% of listed buildings.
It experiences an average of 11 freeze-thaw cycles a year, fewer than 90% of listed buildings. Of these, 4 follow at least 1 mm of rain in the preceding 48 hours. Average temperatures at this location have risen by 0.3°C per decade since 1991.
Averages for 1991–2020; temperature trend 1991–2025. Figures describe the wider area (a grid cell of roughly 10 km), not the individual site. Contains modified Copernicus Climate Change Service information 2026.
More on this building
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- Full EPC report — heating system, energy costs, size, glazing, construction etc.
- Sale history — 13 transactions since 1995
- Related listed building consents — 3 applications
- Detailed attributes — period, style, materials, features
- Flood risk assessment
- Radon risk assessment
- Weather exposure and heating demand — rain and frost month by month and year by year, wind direction, solar and humidity
Matched applications, energy data and sale records are assembled automatically and may contain errors. Flag incorrect data.
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