Coleton Fishacre

A small country house dating from 1925-6, designed by Oswald Milne for Rupert d’Oyly Carte. The house is constructed of locally quarried slate rubble, with a Delabole slate roof featuring gabled ends. The plan is asymmetrical, in a "Y" shape. It is two stories high. The north-west entrance front is characterized by a two-story, three-sided, hipped-roof porch situated in the obtuse angle between two wings of unequal length. The longer right-hand wing features a large external chimney stack on the front wall, with a set-off and tall flue. The left-hand wing includes a round-arched carriageway. The central doorway is framed by hollow-chamfered stone, and the door is a moulded twelve-panel oak door. A wrought iron weather vane sits over the left-hand gable end. A circular forecourt is paved with radiating granite sets. The south front includes two asymmetrical wings at an obtuse angle. The longer right-hand (east) wing incorporates a two-story semi-circular bay with a semi-conical roof and a stone stack over the ridge. The left-hand (west) wing features a carved stone sundial under the eaves. Throughout the house, windows have oak frames with iron casements containing leaded panes; the ground floor windows have flat stone arches. Set back to the right of the east wing is a one-story and attic wing with two hipped dormers in a catslide roof, above an open loggia supported by square stone rubble piers. A long, paved terrace runs along the south front, with a low parapet and dry-stone slate rubble retaining walls, including a half-domed niche overlooking a circular pond with a fountain on the lower terrace.

The interior is accessed via a circular porch leading to a hall passage at the back of the east wing. There is an open-well staircase with a panelled balustrade and a vaulted bedroom corridor. A doorway with superimposed stepped archivolt leads to semi-circular steps descending into a saloon at a lower level. The panelled and shelved library contains an overmantel with a birdseye-view painting of the peninsula by Spencer Hoffman, and a wind-dial above. Other interior details include Bolection moulded chimney pieces and door frames, panelled doors, and coved and moulded cornices. The original electric light fittings remain. The house is set within gardens, planted by Lady Dorothy d'Oyly Carte, in a wooded coomb overlooking Pudcombe Cove and is now owned by the National Trust.