The Hermitage Including Pond, Rockeries And Waterfalls To The South

The Hermitage, including pond, rockeries and waterfalls to the south, is a summerhouse at Bicton Park, probably dating from around 1840. It is a small but exceptionally picturesque building in romantic and rustic style.

The structure is single storey with brick walls and stack, all clad with tiny fishscale shingles. The plinth and frieze are made of narrow vertical strips of wood with rounded faces. The roof is covered with shaped oak shingles and features an oak chimney shaft.

The main building comprises an octagonal room with an end stack and pyramidal roof, flanked by narrow gable-ended wings which serve as entrance lobbies. The front elevation is symmetrical. The main room has canted sides and contains fixed pane windows: a front 3-light window flanked by 2-light windows. All windows have flat architraves made by short round rods and contain irregular patterns of stained glass, apparently assembled from fragments of older windows. A frieze made up of strips of wood includes crudely made motifs such as rifles, crossed swords and flags. The soffit of the deep eaves is similarly finished. The pyramidal roof, with its small cap and oak ridges enriched with small quatrefoils, is topped by oak shingles with shaped edges and small bosses. The apex is surmounted by a rustic cross. The wings have porches front and back, projecting as far as the main room. The open gables are fish scale shingled with bargeboards surmounted by rustic finials and supported on similarly clad octagonal posts with abaci and bases. The doorways have simple architraves. The soffit of the porch roof and space over the doorways feature patterns made up of strips of wood, with motifs such as a crown and griffin. The rear elevation is similar to the front except the stack projects square from the main room, with a narrow oak chimney shaft rustically carved.

The interior is remarkably intact and complete with original furniture. All interior walls and the roof are lined with dark brown basket-weave wicker-work. The main room floor is made up of tiny bones, apparently from deer. The small fireplace has a granite surround containing panels of crude vermiculated rustication. Above it are the Rolle arms, made from strips of wood, as is the apex boss. The rustic furniture comprises an octagonal table with a top patterned with strips of wood and chairs of various sizes made up of turned timbers. There are also a couple of probably African ethnographic trophies.

The Hermitage stands on a terrace from which stone steps descend to a long stone-lined pond on a lower terrace. Below these are two small rockeries with waterfalls. In the left (western) rockery a natural stream has been divided into several channels as it passes through a rockery planted with dwarf Welsh conifers. At the right end the middle channels join to form a small waterfall into a semi-circular pond, whilst the outer channels flow round the outside to a drain. The right (eastern) rockery includes three waterfalls.

The Hermitage is a lovely example of a romantic and rustic summerhouse set within the finest landscaped gardens in Devon, which also includes Bicton House, the Rolle family residence, and a number of fine listed buildings such as the Orangery, Palm House and the furniture of the Italianate Gardens.