Sharpham House

Sharpham House is a country house of Grade I importance, begun circa 1770 by Sir Robert Taylor for Captain Philemon Pownall, continued by Pownall's daughter Jane after the 1780s, and completed in 1824 by his grandson John Bastard. Remains of an earlier house are said to exist incorporated at the back.

The house is constructed of ashlar with a rusticated ground floor and a slate hipped roof with lead rolls to the ridge and hips. The central axial stack is rendered.

In 1770 Taylor built a Palladian villa onto an earlier house, depicted in a survey illustration of 1749. The old house was presumably used as the rear (west) service wing for the new house. The building is entered on the ground floor through a canted bay at the front into an octagonal entrance hall which leads to a wide oval stairwell behind, flanked by a dining room on the right and library on the left, all contained in a shallow rectangular plan. After Pownall's death in 1780, work continued and the plan was deepened by three bays on the south side and two bays on the north side, absorbing more of the earlier house at the back. The only remaining evidence of the earlier structure is the thick walls of irregular plan and a reused Tudor doorframe and mullion window. The three-storey two-bay range to the west of the south front may incorporate earlier work or could be entirely early 19th century, as building continued until about 1824. The lower wings to left and right at the back are late 19th-century additions that originally contained a laundry, coachhouse, and other services, but were converted into two separate dwellings in the late 20th century.

The exterior comprises three storeys, attic, and cellar under part. The rusticated ground floor has a string at first floor level and a stone modillion eaves cornice. The astylar elevations present an east front of one–three–one bays, with the centre featuring a wide full-height canted bay with a Roman Doric portico with paired columns and a balustrade to the balcony alcove. Tall first-floor windows have apron balustrades and alternately feature or lack triangular pediments. The small square second-floor windows have moulded architraves. The rusticated ground floor also has small square windows, though most now have lowered sills. The north and south returns are similar but without the canted bay, both originally three bays, with the north increased by two and the south by three additional bays. The sashes are twelve-pane on the first floor and six-pane on the second floor; ground-floor windows are now mostly garden casements. The rear elevation has a three-window centre with twelve-pane sashes, set back on the left with modillion cornice, and a wing on the right with a porch in the angle featuring a roll-moulded Tudor arch stone doorway with mouchettes in the spandrels, a moulded stone two-light window with a hoodmould, and a round-headed sash above. Low service wings flank the rear courtyard; the left-hand wing has a wooden cupola above the roof.

The interior retains most of its 18th-century features. The octagonal entrance hall, which fits into and is entered through the canted bay at the front, is lined with a colonnade of eight Roman Doric columns and features a compass design in the floor. Behind the entrance hall is the oval stairwell with niches in the walls, rising the full height of the house to a coffered dome and lantern, with an exceptionally fine cantilevered staircase with a plain stick balustrade incorporating monoframes on the landings. On the ground floor, the library contains small panels attributed to Angelica Kauffman and classically decorated bookcases. On the first floor, the drawing room has figurative medallions, plaques, and garlands, and a marble chimneypiece. The octagonal saloon also has a fine marble chimneypiece with a carved plaque said to be reminiscent of Henry Cheere, though Regency panels have been superimposed on the walls. The principal bedchamber has a coved ceiling with Regency decoration and an early 19th-century white marble chimneypiece. On the second floor there are two groin-vaulted lobbies off the landing and a pair of oval rooms over the octagonal saloon with oval vestibules in the spaces between. Most of the 18th-century joinery, plasterwork, and chimneypieces are intact, including the original servants' staircase, though there are some early 19th-century chimneypieces and reeded ceiling borders. At the back, the former laundry and service wings have late 19th-century arch-braced timber roofs.

Sharpham was once the property of the Yarde family of Bradley. It was bought by Philip Cockey in 1748 as a speculation for the timber on the estate rather than for the old house. In 1765 Captain Philemon Pownall bought the estate and circa 1770 employed Sir Robert Taylor to rebuild the house with a fortune of £64,963 acquired from the capture in 1762 of the Spanish galleon Ermiona during the Seven Years War.