Gerston Manor, Front Garden Wall And Gate Piers, And South Manor

Gerston Manor, Front Garden Wall and Gate Piers, and South Manor, West Alvington

Farmhouse, now subdivided into two dwellings. The building dates from the 17th century with earlier origins, and has undergone additions and alterations in the 18th century, 19th century, and 21st century.

The walls are constructed of slate-stone rubble, mainly rendered with smooth cement. The roofs are Welsh slate with timber fenestration.

The plan consists of a main three-room single-depth range with a rear (west) cross-wing and a lower barn range to the south, subdivided into two floors. The main range is now subdivided into two houses: Gerston Manor to the north and South Manor, which includes the barn range, to the south. South Manor has a narrow single-storey extension at the east end. A 21st-century two-storey extension to the rear of Gerston Manor contains staircases.

The two-storey farmhouse has an asymmetrical five-window front with a slightly projecting left end. The windows are mainly 21st-century tripartite sashes, modelled on a unit in the first-floor right bay which may be early 19th century. The 21st-century slate roof is hipped to the left end and gabled to the right, with a half-hipped wing at the rear. Two axial stacks with drip-courses and a right gable-end stack are of rubble construction. A 18th-century porch to the right of centre serving Gerston Manor has a flat hood supported on corbelled stone piers. Heavy 18th-century double doors, each of three panels, are set in a 17th-century ovolo-moulded wooden doorframe. To the left of centre is a 20th-century glazed porch serving South Manor with a small outbuilding wing or lobby beyond. The half-hipped 18th-century farm range at the south end of South Manor is of exposed slate-stone rubble with two doorways and stone steps, showing evidence of at least two phases of construction. The range terminates with a single-storey rubble stone lean-to addition. At the rear (west) is a cut-off stone lateral stack, partly rendered. A stone rubble garden wall at the front of Gerston Manor has rough square piers with ball finials.

The interior of Gerston Manor was not inspected in 2009. South Manor contains an early chamfered round-headed door with a pintle (a pivot for a hinge). There is also a wide, segmental-headed stone fireplace in the principal ground-floor room, from which a 19th-century chimneypiece has been removed and re-sized for installation in the bedroom on the first floor.

Gerston Manor was historically the family seat of the Bastard family, who held nine manors in Devon and are recorded in the Domesday Book. It has been suggested that the Bastards lived at Gerston Manor for several centuries following the Norman Conquest, and that the current farmhouse probably stands on the site of the former manor house. The family's standing in the area became resurgent in the late 16th century, and at the turn of the 17th century William Bastard became Member of Parliament for Dartmouth. The family seat was re-established at Gerston around this time, roughly contemporary with the rebuilding of the house.

The principal farmhouse range dates from the 17th century, with fragmentary remains that appear to be of earlier date, probably medieval. The 18th-century cross wing and farm buildings were constructed during remodelling of the house. The building is shown in its current configuration on the Ordnance Survey map of 1886, where it is referred to as "Gerston" and is labelled "Remains of a Mansion".