Dartington Lodge

Dartington Lodge is a pair of attached lodges, dating from the 1860s, situated at the south entrance to Dartington Hall park. They were later converted into a single residence. The construction is limestone rubble with rendered and limestone dressings, and features sham timber framing with plaster infill to the front gable. The roofs are steeply pitched Welsh slate, originally thatched, with gabled lends and overhanging verges displaying decorative bargeboards, including trailing foliage and pendants, with shaped fronts and fishscale-like eaves details. A central rendered chimney stack rises above the lodges, featuring a group of four polygonal shafts with a moulded base and cap.

The lodges were originally planned as two cottages, each containing a living room with back-to-back fireplaces sharing a central axial stack. A projecting two-storey porch originally provided direct entry to the front rooms of each cottage, and a central wing at the rear contained service rooms for each, creating a cruciform plan. In the 20th century, the cottages were combined into one house, with the open-fronted porch partially blocked to accommodate a new staircase and a lean-to outshut added to the rear wing’s right side. The style is Picturesque Tudor Gothic.

The two-storey front elevation is slightly asymmetrical with three bays. A large, projecting gabled porch dominates the facade, with the first floor jettied on corbelled stone side walls and featuring a hollow-chamfered mullion window with Tudor arch heads and diamond leaded panes, including shields and stained glass at the centre. The ground floor of the porch was originally open-fronted but is now partially blocked with a 20th-century door inserted to the left. Side windows of the porch have Tudor arch, hollow-chamfered frames, moulded rendered surrounds, and hoodmoulds. To the left of the porch is a two-light window with a moulded rendered surround and hoodmould; to the right, a shallow projecting bay window and a two-light window in the gable above. The opposite gable end has a similar two-light window. Most windows, except those in the porch, are 20th-century metal frame casements with leaded panes. The left (south) gable end corners are splayed on the ground floor and corbelled twice to form a square corner above.

Internally, the main rooms retain back-to-back fireplaces with projecting hoods on large corbels. The original staircase has been replaced with a new one within what was the open-fronted porch, now a small stair hall. The Irish playwright Sean O’Casey is recorded to have resided at Dartington Lodge. He rented a house on Ashburton Road in 1938 after relocating from London with his family so his children could attend Dartington Hall School, and later moved to Torquay in 1955. A painting dated 1883, depicting the lodge with a thatched roof and an open-fronted porch, is in the possession of the current occupier.