The Old Rectory

The Old Rectory, Diptford

A rectory, now a private house, probably dating from 1830-40 with later nineteenth-century extensions. The building is constructed of stone rubble, stuccoed and lined out, with a slate hipped roof featuring deep eaves with plastered soffit and rendered axial stacks.

The plan is rectangular and double-depth, arranged with two principal rooms and a kitchen facing the south garden front. The drawing room occupies the left, the dining room the centre, and the kitchen the right, positioned behind blind windows to maintain external symmetry. Service rooms project slightly to the rear with back stairs. The main stair hall, entered from the back (north entrance front), is positioned centrally behind the dining room, with a smaller study behind the drawing room to the left. The porch and entrance lobby on the north front are likely mid-nineteenth-century additions, and the former dairy (now a dining room) to the rear right is certainly a later nineteenth-century addition, as are some minor interior alterations including the redecoration of the dining room.

The exterior is two storeys. The south garden front is symmetrical with 2:2:2 bays of 2-light transomed casements with glazing bars; the first-floor windows may be later nineteenth-century replacements while the ground floor features French windows, all with granite cills and thresholds. The two right-hand ground-floor windows were originally dummies concealing the kitchen but now have facsimile French windows. A verandah originally ran across the ground floor, returning around the left-hand three-bay west front, which has matching fenestration but with the right-hand first floor left blank. On the north elevation, an entrance porch with a lean-to roof is supported on slim granite columns. The doorway into the entrance lobby is set back with panelled double doors and a roll-moulded architrave with blocks at the corners. The north side of the lobby contains a large tripartite fixed-light window with lattice and margin pane, similarly detailed. Above sits a stair window, a sash with lattice panes. To the left of the stair window, a late nineteenth-century two-storey extension projects under a lean-to roof, a continuation of the main hipped roof. The east elevation is the service side, with unsymmetrical arrangements of nineteenth-century 2-light transomed casements with glazing bars; the first floor is left blank, the ground floor largely blocked, with a doorway right of centre featuring a rectangular overlight with glazing bars and a flush panel door, now partly glazed.

The drawing room retains an egg-and-dart cornice, a border around the ceiling with palmettes, and a ceiling centrepiece with large acanthus leaves, all in original colour and gilding. The window pelmets with acanthus decoration are also gilded. A marble chimneypiece holds a fine cast iron grate on casteros with brass acanthus leaves and lions' paws to the consoled ends. The dining room (now sitting room) has a later nineteenth-century moulded cornice with a trailing vine ceiling border and ceiling rose with acanthus leaves. The black marble chimneypiece is also late nineteenth-century; the north end features a large elliptically arched alcove. The study is plain with a blocked fireplace. The entrance lobby has nineteenth-century glazed double doors opening to the stair hall, which has a domed centrepiece containing a light rose with large acanthus leaves; there is no ceiling cornice. The open-well stairs have turned wooden balusters, probably replacements for plain stick balusters, but the moulded mahogany handrail is original and is wreathed over the curtail; tread ends are scrolled. The staircase leads to a spacious landing on the first floor.