Bolham House

Bolham House is a country house with origins in the 18th century, significantly remodelled in the early 19th century on the site of an earlier building. The exterior is stuccoed, featuring a moulded plinth, a mid-floor string course, a dry slate hipped roof with wide eaves supported by brackets, rendered stacks over the hips and cross walls, numerous octagonal clay pots, and cast-iron ogee gutters.

The house is arranged with a double-depth plan, incorporating a large central entrance hall and a large stair hall linked to an axial passage running through the house. A lower service wing is situated at the rear right, and an early 20th-century ballroom extends from the rear left.

The two-storey front has a regular 1:2:1 window arrangement, with two-storey bowed windows defining the end bays and a three-bay round-arched loggia on the ground floor. Original hornless sash windows with glazing bars are present throughout. The left-hand return front displays a single-storey ballroom on the left and the original garden front on the right, featuring alternate single and tripartite sashes. A verandah with a ramped, glazed and part-leaded roof covers the ground floor. The right-hand return front, a four-window range, serves as the entrance front, marked by a pedimented doorway located under the left-hand window of the service wing. The doorway features a four-pane overlight and a six-panel door.

The interior retains original features, including a plaster barrel vault and lantern over the open-well staircase in the stair hall, which also boasts a cast-iron balustrade with anthemion balusters and an open string. An oval, plaster-vaulted vestibule is situated to the left of the stair hall and an entrance hall with a moulded plaster ceiling cornice lies to the left of this. The entrance hall is connected to the stair hall via three doorways. Flanking reception rooms exhibit early 19th-century plaster bands with trailing vine motifs over moulded cornices with egg and dart enrichment, as well as central acanthus roses, the rose in the room on the right having a guilloche border. A room behind the entrance hall shares a similar ceiling cornice. The doorways throughout feature moulded architraves and six-panel doors, the majority with fielded panels, accompanied by panelled window shutters. Various original or older fireplaces are also present, including a notable marble fireplace in the left-hand room.

Bolham House was formerly the residence of Sir Walter Raleigh and later the home of the Amory family, who subsequently moved to Knightshayes Court.