Rockbeare Manor Including Terraces Adjoining To South

This is a large country house with a complex building history. The main structure dates from the mid-18th century, was improved around 1770, substantially remodelled around 1820, and the south wing altered around 1920 by architect Marley Horder. The house is built of stucco on brick with brick stacks and plastered chimney shafts, under slate roofs.

Plan and Form

The house is U-shaped. The main block faces south and includes a large central heated entrance lobby with full-height curving front bays and end stacks. From each end, rear blocks project at right angles. The south wing has a corridor along the inner side past two rooms separated by an approximately 1920 cross passage leading to a front door, with the large dining room at the end featuring full-height curving bows on each side. The northern rear wing extends back the same distance as the south wing and includes the service rooms, service stair and service door; the kitchen at the end has a full-height curving bay on the north side. Both rear wings have projecting end stacks and their ends are connected by a single-storey room with inner corridor.

The house was raised to three storeys around 1820, but the kitchen and dining room were left at two storeys. The kitchen also has a cellar underneath. The front is flanked by single-storey pavilions linked to the main block by large archways. The south pavilion was formerly an orangery. The north pavilion, with rear stack and cellar, was formerly a billiard room.

West (Main) Front

The attractive west front has a symmetrical arrangement of seven windows in a 2:3:2 pattern, as modernised around 1820. The full-height bows have stucco platbands at first-floor level. The centre features part-glazed double doors with a reeded doorcase and entablature on shallow console brackets, flanked by 12-pane sashes. A wide porch extends across the entire centre bay with pairs of fluted Doric columns and a moulded entablature. Its flat roof forms a balcony enclosed by ornate cast-iron railings. The first-floor windows opening onto the balcony are French windows with louvred shutters. The bays on each side have 12-pane sashes over sunken panels containing cast ironwork similar to the balcony. The second floor has 9-pane (three over six) sashes. There is a moulded timber eaves cornice below a plain parapet which continues around the return walls. The roof is hipped at both ends, as are the ends of the rear blocks; the rear kitchen and dining room have flat roofs.

Two 18th-century watercolours inside the house show the building before its Regency alterations. The original two-storey Palladian front lacked the bays and featured a central pediment over the central three windows and a cupola. The pavilions survive from this phase. Both have identical gabled fronts with moulded eaves cornice over large Venetian windows containing a sash with glazing bars. The connecting round-headed archways have stucco keystones. The door to the northern pavilion inside the archway is mid-18th century with fielded panels. The southern pavilion has a rear chimney shaft, but it is false and for symmetry. In the rear wall here, the centre breaks forward and contains French windows with a fanlight over, all with glazing bars. There are another three similar windows on the outer side. These are probably from around 1820.

South Front

The south front is simple with a regular but asymmetrical arrangement of seven windows in the main part and three in the bowed section. The main part has 12-pane sashes to ground and first floors with 9-pane sashes to the second floor. Some windows at the left end are blind with painted glazing bars. The approximately 1920 south doorway has a glazed door with an overlight with glazing bars made up of intersecting circles. Above is a nowy-headed slate sundial dated 1914. Towards the left end, a chimney shaft rises from a shaped base with soffit-chamfered coping (there is another in a similar position on the north side). The bowed three-window section, though lower, has taller windows: ground-floor 12-pane sashes and first-floor 9-pane sashes under sunken panels in the parapet.

North Front

The north front has a similar arrangement of three windows in the bay and seven in the main section, but here the bay has 20-pane and 16-pane sashes, while the rest have smaller ground-floor 20-pane sashes with 12-pane sashes above; again some of the right-end windows are blind. The rear end has some 12-pane sashes at first-floor level, and across the connection wing are three round-headed sashes with glazing bars. The inner sides of the wings both include a tripartite window and other sashes. The rear of the main block has a large round-headed sash in which the upper glazing bars intersect in Gothic fashion.

Interior

The interior is good, with mostly Regency features from around 1820, but some 18th-century features survive in the south wing. A couple of the chimneypieces here may not be in their original positions.

The Dining Room

At the rear is the splendid dining room of around 1770, the best room in the house and a remarkable example of its period by any standards. Bowed at each end, it is richly and colourfully decorated, with some furniture and Axminster carpet to match. The walls are lined with large fielded panels over a moulded dado. A large Ionic column with apricot-coloured scagliola shaft stands in each corner. The architraves include marbled flutes of the same apricot stone, although that on the chimneypiece is darker and redder in colour. The chimneypiece comprises flanking fluted Ionic columns surmounted by vases on the moulded entablature, which is in the style of the ceiling cornice and includes a central plaque carved with a scene of sacrifice.

However, it is the ornamental plasterwork which is the most important element in the room. It comprises Adam-like scrolls on the ceiling, but the arrangement of panels is individualistic. The northern bow and the western long wall contain moulded plaster reliefs of large hanging lamps enriched with dolphins and incorporating lamp brackets. Above the chimneypiece is a large medallion including a bas-relief of a classical scene representing the sacrifice of a bull. It is surrounded with nut husk decoration and a festoon of glass-like foliage tied up at the top in an Adam-style bow. The work as a whole is certainly very high quality, but the concept is a little quirky in places and the plasterwork of higher relief than is usual at the time. It may be the work of one of Adam's London rivals or perhaps a competent provincial imitator.

Other Interiors

The main stair in the front wing rises in broad flights around three sides of the large stair hall. It has an open string with carved and shaped stair brackets, walnut veneer flat-moulded handrail, and each tread has three different turned mahogany balusters with blocks. It is undeniably mid-18th century in style, but it is oddly proportioned and may have been rebuilt as part of the approximately 1820 refurbishment.

Many of the rooms have good Regency details and most of the contemporary chimneypieces are marble and include their original cast-iron grates. The drawing room over the entrance hall is a particularly fine example. It includes an orange-yellow marble chimneypiece enriched with a white marble urn and drapery, modillioned doorcases, and panelled shuttering. This room was enhanced by clever trompe l'oeil painting of a classical arcade around the room, done around 1920. A main bedroom alongside has very fine 19th-century wallpaper. One of the lesser bedrooms on the top floor of the main block was decorated like a tent around 1820. The vaulted ceiling and walls have red-striped Regency wallpaper with a series of knots along the cornice. At one end the wallpaper is folded back to create the impression of a tent opening onto a painted scene of sea, sky and gulls.

Terraces and Setting

On the south side, low terraces extend around formal lawns. These were probably rebuilt around 1920 but include six 18th-century stone vases.

Assessment

This is an important country house which is most attractively sited in landscaped grounds. It looks particularly charming from the south-west as meadows rise gradually towards the front. Despite the 1920 modernisation, the house looks, both internally and externally, as though little has happened here since around 1820. There are no later external accretions, and the nearby 18th-century stables and coach house with the early 19th-century model farmyard behind only contribute to the period atmosphere. The intact decorative scheme of the approximately 1770 dining room is of considerable interest. There is nothing quite like it in Devon. It looks somewhat rustic when compared with Wyatt's Music Room at Powderham, perhaps its nearest comparison.

It is not known whether the Duntze family had the property when the original house was built, but it was owned by Sir John Duntze in 1760. The Duntze family in the late 17th and early 18th centuries were wealthy Exeter merchants, and their early 18th-century town house survives at 143 Fore Street.