Fairpark And Attached Garden And Yard Walls

Fairpark is a farmhouse, now a house, with an attached garden, farmyard, and boundary walls. It dates from the late 18th century and has some 20th-century alterations. The building is stuccoed with volcanic trap rubble on the ground floor and brick above, topped by a half-hipped slate roof with end stacks that have rendered shafts. The plan features a double depth layout, two rooms wide, with a central entrance leading into a wide passage that contains the stairs.

The exterior is two storeys high, with an attic and cellar. It has rusticated quoins and a symmetrical three-bay front with a central open Tuscan porch. The front door is a six-panel design with glazed top panels and a doorcase featuring panelled reveals. The ground floor and three first-floor windows are late 18th-century or early 19th-century 16-pane sashes. The left side of the building has a louvred opening to the attic, while the rear elevation features a large square-headed recess in the centre, which is paved below and incorporates a well.

Inside, the house includes original panelled doors, moulded cornices, white marble chimney-pieces, and a stick baluster staircase with mahogany newel posts. There have been some alterations to the first-floor partitions, and the attic room has a door in front of the louvred opening, which is said to have been used for drying clothes.

The tall boundary walls, partly brick and partly rendered with rounded corners and slate coping, enclose a vegetable garden to the west, the former farmyard to the east, and the rear service yard, which can be accessed through a doorway from the farm lane. Some of these walls also serve as retaining walls along the farm lane leading up to the house from Exeter Road, where they are notably tall and contribute significantly to the character of East Town and the eastern end of Crediton. The roof features king post and strut trusses with metal fixings. Fairpark is an ancient site, mentioned in a mid-16th-century terrier as being in private hands.