Moffats Tresillian

Moffats is a large villa built around 1870, located in Chelston, Torquay. The building is finished in stucco and features a hipped slate roof adorned with pierced terracotta ridge tiles and finials. The chimney stacks have rendered shafts with cornices and terracotta pots. The house is designed with a deep rectangular plan, built over a basement, and has a ground floor terrace overlooking the garden. The entrance leads into a hallway with stairs to the right, and there is a service block known as Moffats to the right, which is under the same ownership but occupied separately.

The villa stands two storeys high with a basement. The ground floor has rusticated quoins, deep eaves, and a band at the eaves and verges. There is a platband at the first-floor level and a moulded string at the cill level of the first-floor windows, which are fitted with pilastered or moulded architraves and glazed with 2-pane plate-glass sashes. The service block is simpler and has dismantled chimney shafts. The entrance elevation to Tresillian features two windows, a shallow projecting stack to the left, and a centre bay that is slightly advanced, containing a porch with a pilastered round-headed doorway, a moulded arch, a 6-panel door with a plain fanlight, and original floor tiles. The porch itself is a shallow projecting gable.

The garden elevation on the left side has two canted bays that rise two storeys and narrow central windows. In front of the basement, the terrace extends over a three-bay arcade of segmental arches. The interior of the villa is very well preserved, showcasing complete joinery including doors and skirtings, a staircase with turned balusters, and elaborate plasterwork friezes. Moffats is recognized as a very complete example of a middle-sized High Victorian villa typical of the developments in Chelston.