Fortescue House

Fortescue House is a detached house located on Fortescue Road in Ilfracombe. It was built in the early 19th century and altered in the late 19th century. The house features rendered solid walls and a hipped slate roof at the left end, with a rendered chimney on the right gable.

The exterior has three storeys and a symmetrical front with three windows. In the center of the ground floor, there is a wooden entrance porch, which has been infilled, supported by plain shafted Tuscan columns. The entablature above the porch includes triglyphs with floral designs in the metopes. A 20th-century glazed door is topped by a patterned late 19th-century fanlight, and there is an original patterned fanlight over the inner door. The top of the porch is adorned with late 19th-century ornamental iron cresting in a Gothic style.

Above the porch, there is a plain sash window with one upright glazing bar for each sash. The outer windows on the ground and second storeys feature canted wooden bays with steep slated roofs, finished with iron crestings similar to the porch. The sash windows in these bays have one upright glazing bar each, while the third-storey windows have barred sashes; the outer windows have eight panes below and four above, and the center window has six panes below and three above, with a guard rail in front of the latter.

A moulded wooden board runs below the eaves. On the left side, there is an eight-paned sash window in the ground storey and a wooden canted bay window in the second storey, which has sash windows with one horizontal glazing bar each. Set back to the left is a single-storey, flat-roofed addition from the late 20th century, although two of its windows appear to be late 19th-century sashes with one upright glazing bar each.

The interior has not been inspected, but it is noted that immediately inside the front door is the original wooden staircase, featuring thin square balusters that are voluted at the foot. A building has been recorded at this site on the Ilfracombe tithe map of 1840.