Cambria House

Cambria House is an early 19th-century house located on Dawlish Road in Teignmouth. The building features painted roughcast walls and a hipped slate roof, which has ten diagonally-set flues leading to an axial brick stack. It has a square plan and is designed in a picturesque style.

The house is single-storey with attics and has a three-window range. Reeded cast-iron columns support a wide roof overhang that creates a verandah along the east and south garden fronts, as well as part of the west side. Each garden front has three gabled dormers above two-light margin-paned casement windows, which are complemented by segmental-arched fanlights with radial glazing bars. The central dormers feature larger windows, while the west side has one dormer. The entrance is located on the west side and consists of a six-panel door, with a two-storey gabled projection above that includes a six-over-six pane sash window leading into the entrance hall.

Inside, a semi-elliptical arch leads to an open-well, open-string staircase adorned with stick balusters, turned newels, and a wreathed swan's neck rail with a curtail step. The ground floor rooms are finished with dado rails, reeded cornices, and marble fireplaces, one in red and one in black. The attic fireplaces are made of painted stone.

Historically, the house was originally thatched and is believed to have been built by Commander Laurence Gwynne, who lived here and was known as a Sheriff of London and Middlesex as well as a mathematician. Cambria House is an interesting example of an early 19th-century cottage ornée, designed around its central stack and surrounded by a verandah.