Old Rectory Nursing Home

Old Rectory Nursing Home

The Old Rectory is a rectory for the church of St James, built in the late 1870s to early 1880s to designs by Robert Medley Fulford, the architect who also designed the church (subsequently rebuilt). The building is now in use as a nursing home.

The house is constructed in brick with polychromatic detail and tile-hanging featuring ornamental bands of shaped tiles, with Ham Hill stone dressings and a tiled roof. The chimneys have staggered brick shafts with corbelled cornices. The style is Free Vernacular Revival.

The plan is roughly rectangular with an entrance into a passage containing a staircase rising towards the front. Some alterations have been made to internal partitions, particularly on the first floor; rear additions are not included in the listing.

The exterior is of 2 and 3 storeys with an asymmetrical 4-window front. The right-hand bay is gabled to the front and projects slightly forward. Blue brick banding runs across the ground floor with a cogged brick cornice below the first-floor tile-hanging. Deep eaves and verges are carried on timber brackets. A shallow projecting porch with lean-to roof features ornamental tile detail. The porch doorway is 2-centred and chamfered in stone with a moulded arch; alongside it is a stone slit window. A plank door with strap hinges sits below a shallow hipped porch hood on brackets with pierced timber spandrels and a cast iron floral finial.

To the right of the porch is a 4-light stone mullioned ground floor window with ovolo-moulded mullions and a high transom; the lights above the transom are shoulder-headed. To the left of the front door are three ground floor windows, of 3-light and 2-light types, all stone mullioned with chamfered mullions. The first-floor window on the right is a 3-light transomed timber oriel with three sgraffito panels below the sill; directly above on the second floor is a 3-light ovolo-moulded window with a small pentice on brackets above. A 4-light mullioned staircase window has ovolo-moulded mullions, a high transom, and quatrefoils with stained glass in the head. The two left-hand first-floor windows are set beneath hipped hoods with shaped spandrels; they are 2 and 3-light ovolo-moulded mullioned windows with high transoms, the upper lights trefoil-headed, and the sills are on brackets. The right return features a projecting stack and two 2-light ovolo-moulded mullioned windows with high transoms.

Despite alterations made for the current use, good interior detail survives. The staircase has a pierced timber balustrade and ornamental timber ceiling in the stairhall. The former library, located to the right of the entrance, preserves a timber ribbed ceiling and a wall frieze with Latin texts appropriate to library use, though the chimney-piece may be a 1930s replacement. The principal rear right room retains its original cornice and a historic chimney-piece.

Robert Medley Fulford was one of the finest late 19th-century Devon architects. He trained under John Hayward of Exeter but also worked in the office of William White, whose influence is evident in this building. Fulford specialised in church work, and domestic buildings to his designs are rare, though he also designed Harry Hems's workshop in Longbrook Street. The stained glass was likely produced by Drake of Exeter, who frequently collaborated with Fulford.