Bradridge House

Bradridge House is a small country house in Diptford, substantially remodelled around 1830 but incorporating elements of an earlier building. It is constructed of stone rubble rendered and lined out, with a rendered rear wing whose inner face shows painted stone rubble with slate hanging above.

The roofscape is distinctive, with slate throughout. The main range has a gabled right-hand end and a semi-conical left-hand end topped with a wooden finial. The parallel rear range and rear wing have lower roofs with hipped ends and wooden finials, all featuring lead rolls to the hips and ridges and paired shaped eaves brackets to wooden gutters. The verandah carries a bitumen-coated slate roof. Two plastered rear lateral chimney stacks have three and four octagonal moulded shafts respectively, and a right-hand gable-end stack displays a moulded cornice with set-offs.

The building's plan reveals its layered history. Although largely the result of the circa 1830 remodelling, the main front range appears to preserve the plan of an earlier house—either a three-room plan with the lower end to the left, or a two-room plan with a third room added to the right, evidenced by a solid masonry wall separating the right-hand room from the central room. The rear wing behind the right-hand end contains earlier, probably 18th-century roof trusses, and several 18th-century panelled doors survive on the first floor of both the main range and rear wing.

The circa 1830 remodelling created the present disposition: an entrance hall to the left of centre with staircase, a drawing room to the left with a segmentally bowed left-hand end wall and verandah, and a dining room to the right of the stair hall. Both drawing and dining rooms are heated from rear lateral stacks, while the small far right-hand end room, like an inner room of a traditional three-room plan, is heated from the gable-end stack. The remodelling also added a shallow parallel service range to the rear of the main range, containing a small parlour to the left, a rear porch behind the stairhall, and a cupboard and pantry behind the central room. A longitudinal corridor runs through the rear service range with a back stairs at the right-hand end. The first room in the rear wing serves as the kitchen, with what appears to be servants' quarters behind and a smaller staircase to the servants' rooms above.

Externally, the house is two storeys. The south front presents a 3:1 window arrangement. The three windows to the left are symmetrically placed early 19th-century two-light casements on the first floor with eight panes per light, and two early 19th-century French doors on the ground floor with glazing bars and margin panes. The central doorway has a moulded wooden architrave and early 19th-century glazed and panelled double doors with a rectangular overlight, set within a shallow recessed porch with panelled inner doors and rectangular overlight. The right-hand windows are early 19th-century sashes with six panes to the first floor and twenty panes to the ground floor. All windows have wooden louvred shutters.

The left-hand end is segmentally bowed with rounded corners and features an early 19th-century verandah on rustic wooden posts with a moulded cast iron gutter; the soffit is plastered. Under the verandah are early 19th-century French doors and a two-light window matching those at the front but with carved and complete curved louvred shutters. The verandah continues around to the left to meet the recessed end wall of the rear range, which has a 19th-century French window on the ground floor and a matching 19th-century casement above, both with louvred shutters.

At the back, a two-storey porch with hipped roof contains a 19th-century half-glazed door; a 19th-century casement to the right with margin panes; and to the left, one ground-floor sash and two first-floor early 19th-century twelve-pane sashes. The inner face of the rear wing has 19th-century two-light first-floor casements and 20th-century ground-floor cabinets and two plank doors. The outer side of the rear wing displays two 18th-century three-light wooden mullion windows with leaded panes and some old glass, possibly with two similar windows to the right and in the end, though these are covered with zinc mesh.

Internally, all early 19th-century joinery is intact and most early 19th-century plaster cornices survive, though some were replaced later in the 19th century. The left-hand room has a white marble chimneypiece with panelled pilasters and anthemion decoration in the frieze, together with a richly moulded plaster cornice and centrepiece; the bolection-moulded panelling is late 19th-century. The right-hand room has a good moulded plaster ceiling with elliptically arched recesses and panelled dado cupboards. An archway was broken through in 1924 from the right-hand room to the stairhall. The rear wall of the stairhall is curved; the open-well staircase has an open string with shaped tread ends, moulded balusters, and a wreathed handrail.

The first-floor left-hand room contains a 19th-century Devonian limestone chimneypiece with cast iron grate. The small room behind has a smaller Devonian limestone chimneypiece with a Gothic cast iron grate. Eighteenth-century fielded two and six-panel doors survive on the first floor and in the rear wing.

The roof of the rear exhibits cranked collars lapped to the faces of principals which have halved apexes.

Bradridge House is an attractive essentially early 19th-century house which has been very little altered since the early 19th century.