Newcomen Cottage

DARTMOUTH

SX8751 RIDGE HILL 673-1/5/207 (North side) 14/09/49 No.4 Newcomen Cottage (Formerly Listed as: RIDGE HILL (North side) No.4 Newcomen House)

GV II

House. 1866, by Thomas Lidstone, surveyor and architect, for himself. Mixed construction; stone rubble with red sandstone and Salcombe sandstone dressings, ornamental timber-framing, some slate-hanging; stone rubble stacks with different brick chimneyshafts; slate roof. PLAN: L-plan. Dining-room wing projecting forward in front of the kitchen to left; low ancillary service block projecting northwards behind the parlour to right. EXTERIOR: 2 storeys with attics. In the style of the C17 merchants' houses, with slate-hung gables and reused oriel windows. The 2 main fronts, the east end of the parlour and the south end of the dining-room wing, have stone rubble side walls, sandstone ashlar ground-floor levels containing sash windows with glazing bars (the dining-room ones with fat glazing bars, possibly C18), first-floor small-panel timber-framing and C17 oriel windows, and slate-hung gables with smaller C17 oriels. The framing and oriels are obviously mended and adapted to their new position but contain a great deal of genuine C17 work. Front doorway immediately to right of the front wing contains a large C19 studded door in Jacobean style under a hood carried on late C17 carved scroll brackets. Directly above, a C16 red sandstone single-light window lighting the stair landing, another larger 3-light version on the north side. The other sides in the same style but using less salvaged work. East end is slate-hung. Ornamental shaped bargeboards to the main gables except for the plain replacement at the east end. INTERIOR: As with the outside the main features of interest are those salvaged from Newcomen House and the other houses on Lower Street. The large open-well stair using early C18 twisted balusters incoporates a carved C17 panel; later C18 balusters on the stair from the first-floor landing to the attics. Oak-panelled dining room with high quality moulded plaster overmantel of c1640, featuring the Pentecost scene. Other C17 plaster, notably the single rib ceiling featuring fleur-de-lys and other motifs in the chamber over the parlour, and the fragments on the first-floor landing (includes a plaque dated 1636). Other reused work includes an oak-panelled overmantel in the chamber over the dining room. Tudor-style chimneypiece in the parlour probably C19. HISTORY: The house was fitted out with the salvaged architectural fragments rescued from the demolition in 1864 of merchants' houses in Lower Street for the construction of the Newcomen Road ramp (see sources for old drawing of Lower Street). The most famous house demolished was the house of Thomas Newcomen (1663-1729), inventor with Thomas Savery of the atmospheric steam engine. (Freeman, Ray: Dartmouth and its Neighbours: Phillimore: 1990-: P.117/PL.65).

Listing NGR: SX8779451692