Mount Dinham House

Mount Dinham House is a school built in 1862, originally a church school designed by an architect currently unknown. It was funded and founded by William Gibbs, an Exeter-born merchant. The building is constructed of red brick in a Flemish bond pattern, with stone dressings, some of which have been painted white, and has a slate roof with cast iron rainwater goods. It is designed in a 17th-century style, reminiscent of a university college building.

The school is situated on the side of St Davids Hill, overlooking the Exe valley, and positioned within a picturesque vista created by two rows of Mount Dinham Free Cottages, also built by Gibbs. The school is sympathetic in style to these cottages, and together with St Michael's Church, they create an asymmetrical and picturesque group. The main building is long and rectangular, with a projecting block to the rear left, forming an approximate U-plan. There are two detached buildings, separately listed, at either end of the front facade.

The symmetrical front elevation has two storeys and six bays, with a central bay, flanked by six bays each side, divided by buttresses with set-offs and gabled fronts with coped gables and a coped parapet. The centre bay features a shaped, coped Dutch gable and stone quoins. A cantilevered bay window on the ground floor has an embattled parapet and transomed stone windows. Round-headed doorways in the returns of the bay have plank doors with strap hinges. A 3-light, transomed window with a hoodmould is located in the centre bay on the first floor. Other windows feature quoined jambs; ground floor windows have hoodmoulds. The ground floor windows have been reglazed with 3-pane lights with margin panes, while the first-floor windows are 3-light casements, likely from the 20th century, with high transoms. The rear elevation incorporates 20th-century additions, but the rear left block retains coped gables.

The interior of the building has not been inspected.

Mount Dinham House is part of a remarkable group of buildings commissioned by Gibbs of Tyntesfield, a Victorian philanthropist, to address the needs of the elderly (the Free Cottages), the young (the school), and the community (the church). Greenaway’s records detail that the site was acquired by John Dinham to prevent it from becoming a fairground, preserving the morals of the young, and was then presented to the City for Gibbs to develop.