Ashcroft

Ashcroft is a villa built around the 1850s, constructed from local grey limestone rubble with stuccoed quoins and architraves, and features slate roofs with stacks that have rendered shafts and projecting cornices. Designed in the Italianate style, the building has a double depth rectangular plan with an entrance tower on the south side and a north-east service block.

The villa is two storeys high and includes a three-stage tower. The front is asymmetrical with a 1:1:1 window arrangement, gabled to the left of the tower. The tower features a plain, narrow, round-headed doorway with a front door made of horizontal fielded panels and a plain overlight. The second stage of the tower has paired round-headed windows, while the third stage has triple windows, all with plain proud architraves and sill blocks. The windows are fitted with sashes that include margin panes. The tower has a low hipped roof with deep eaves and curved eaves brackets.

On the first floor, the windows to the left and right have moulded upper corners and sill blocks, and are glazed with 12-pane sashes. The ground-floor window on the right is also a 12-pane sash, while the left features a French window with margin panes that opens into a barrel-roofed conservatory. The left return has three windows in a similar style, with a likely later ground-floor canted window on the right that is glazed with large plate glass 2-pane sashes.

Inside, the villa retains its original stair with turned balusters, plaster cornices, and joinery. Historically, it was shown as Torcello on the 1866 Ordnance Survey map and is recognized as a particularly attractive example of the Italianate type of villa found in Torquay.