St Michael'S School, Tawstock Court

St Michael's School, Tawstock Court

A country house built in 1787 and remodelled at the rear in 1885, now used as a school since 1940. The building is constructed of stuccoed stone rubble with hipped slate roofs concealed by parapets.

The house is planned around a four-sided rear courtyard. The main garden front (east) contains two principal rooms on each side of a wide entrance hall, with a rear passage containing staircases and entrances at both ends. The left-hand south rear wing houses the library, while the right-hand north rear wing contains service rooms. A gatehouse occupies the rear west wing.

The architecture is principally Gothick in style, with the 1885 additions to the rear executed in late medieval gothic style.

The south front is two storeys high, comprising nine bays symmetrical in arrangement with polygonal corner turrets. An embattled parapet and plat-band run across the front. The three central bays break forward slightly with a pediment. Blind quatrefoil panels appear in each face of the towers and in the pediment. The centrepiece features a single-storey gabled porch with embattled parapet and diagonal buttresses. Tall lancet windows flank the porch, and a large two-centred arched doorway with a four-centred sub-arch and cartouche to the tympanum forms the main entrance. All fenestration is Gothick in character, with pointed arched windows and sashes featuring intersecting glazing bars. Decorative rainwater heads with ornamental cresting and armorial shields flank the porch and pediment.

The left side comprises eight bays including a tower-like rectangular wing at the right-hand end (a westward continuation of the polygonal corner turret) and a rectangular tower-projection at the left end, both rising above five central bays. The middle bay contains a two-storey canted bay window. An embattled parapet and plat-band continue around this elevation. Except for the bay windows, the windows are two-light Gothick casements with Y-bars above sashes; those at the left end feature intersecting glazing bars. The tower wing at the right-hand end has a large mullioned window of five depressed-headed lights with five transomes above a battlemented two-centred arched doorway with trefoil-headed sub-arch and diagonal buttresses.

The right (north) side has a similar tower to those on the east side, with Gothick fenestration. At the right-hand end is a three-bay range. The left-hand bay features a late 19th-century addition: a canted bay entrance front rising to two storeys with a three-light transomed mullion window with rubbed brick surround; some panes contain armorial glass. An ogee-headed doorway (now blocked) with rubbed brick panelling above lies below. The remainder of the north wing extending westwards beyond the tower is concealed by a 20th-century extension.

The west side features a rear late 19th-century courtyard entrance resembling a fortified brick gatehouse with diagonal buttresses and multiple moulded semi-circular arched gateways with a mock portcullis surmounted by a rubbed brick cartouche bearing the date 1885. A reset stone cartouche on the inner face displays an achievement. The inner courtyard walls were entirely rebuilt in 1885 with rubbed brick surrounds to three-light mullioned and transomed windows.

The interior was largely altered in the late 19th century and again in the mid-20th century. A late 19th-century panelled entrance hall features a massive chimneypiece reusing some 17th-century panelling. An anthemion frieze decorates the partitioned principal room to the left. A staircase at the left end of the rear passage has a moulded handrail, barley sugar balusters, and newels with acorn finials. A staircase at the right end, believed to be designed by Sir John Soane, is lit by an elliptical dome with Greek key motif around the drum and Ionic-style pillars to the balustrade at the head of stairs. The library fittings remain principally intact, featuring a geometrical patterned ceiling, fluted Ionic columns dividing the bookcases, and false book spines to the rear of the doorway. An octagonal ground-floor room in the north-east tower retains some replaced earlier panelling on the walls and a chimneypiece with reused Renaissance panels.

Tawstock Court was the seat of the Bourchier Wrey family. An Elizabethan house previously occupied the site; only its gatehouse survives. The original house was destroyed by fire in 1787.