The Old House Including Garden Boundary Walls Sdjoining South West And North East

THE OLD HOUSE

House, formerly known as Wembley House, dating to circa 1840 with extensions added later in the 19th century and again in the late 20th century. The building is situated in Stoke Fleming, near Dartmouth.

The house is constructed of stuccoed slate rubble with stuccoed quoins and hoodmoulds. It has a low-pitched two-span slate roof with deep eaves, gable-ended to the right and hipped over the later 19th-century addition on the left. An axial stack, originally a gable-end stack, contains two brick shafts.

The plan is unusual, comprising four storeys with a kitchen and service rooms on the ground floor and one room on each floor above. The principal room occupies the first floor, with the stairhall behind, accessed through a doorway at the back where the ground level is higher. In the later 19th century, the house was extended by adding a single-room plan wing on the left side where the ground is at the same level as at the back. A verandah was built across the front over an extension to the service rooms in the basement. Both the extension and verandah were removed in the late 20th century.

The south front is three storeys and basement, arranged in one and two bays. The two right-hand bays form the original house, while the single bay recessed slightly to the left is the later 19th-century addition. The original right-hand part has two twelve-pane sashes on each floor, those on the ground and first floor with hoodmoulds, and those on the first and second floor with raised stucco quoins. Most windows retain original 19th-century twelve-pane sashes, except those on the first floor and the right-hand one on the second floor, which are 20th-century facsimiles. The basement has a stone rubble front wall with a late 20th-century glazed door and windows.

The later 19th-century addition to the left features a glazed garden door on the ground floor in an architrave with a triangular head and keyblock, and a wooden canted bay window on the first floor above with 19th-century triangular-headed four-pane sashes. Above the bay window is a segmental tympanum recessed below the projecting eaves.

The left-hand return elevation has two blind first-floor windows and a band at first-floor level. The new elevation displays rusticated stucco on the ground floor with a doorway to the left, framed by a moulded cornice on console brackets, and a 19th-century flush-panel door. A blocked window and a small four-pane sash sit above. To the right, a three-storey 20th-century extension projects slightly.

The right-hand side facing the road features two gables, the smaller to the right, and a sash window on each floor to the right and a casement on the second floor to the left.

The interior contains an open-well staircase with an open-string and moulded soft-wood handrail ramped up to column newels and wreathed over the curtail. It rises through all floors except to the basement, which has a service stair below. The principal room on the piano nobile has a panelled china cupboard, though the chimney-piece is 20th-century. The ground-floor room in the later 19th-century addition has a moulded plaster cornice. The internal joinery is largely intact, including panelled doors.

The listing includes garden boundary walls adjoining the south-west and north-east elevations, dating to the 19th century. The south-west front wall is a high slate rubble retaining wall rising to a higher level against the front of the house, where it features rendered battlements and a Tudor arch doorway. At the back of the house to the north-east stands a pair of rendered rusticated gate-piers with ball finials and a wrought-iron gate.