Grey Gables

Grey Gables is a house built between 1850 and 1852, originally known as Bovey Tracey Vicarage. It is constructed from squared granite and slatestone rubble with ashlar granite dressings, and has slate roofs. The building features granite ashlar chimneystacks with moulded weatherings and caps, disposed asymmetrically, and a bell turret with a bell on the west gable of the west wing. It has a double-depth plan with a single-depth west wing aligned on the same axis, and incorporates an attached chapel and entrance porch to the north side.

The house is two storeys high, with a 1½-storey west wing and a single-storey chapel and porch. It presents a plain Tudor design, mostly with flat-headed windows and without drip moulds, though the gables are finished with shaped copings, kneelers and finals. The chapel is in a simple medieval style. The main south-facing elevation, a three-window range, has a large gable with kneelers, coping and a finial to the right-hand side. Ground-floor windows have Tudor-arched lights with sunk spandrels; to the left are two windows of two lights each, and to the right a canted bay window of five lights. The second storey has three flat-headed windows of two lights each, the right-hand one with a drip-mould. A sunk square panel is located in the apex of the gable. Original glazing has been replaced with single panes of glass.

The west wing has a central doorway with chamfered jambs. To the left is a flat-headed, single-light mullioned window; to the right is a lean-to against the gable of the main house. A canted bay window (possibly a later addition) with 20th-century glazing is set into the south wall of the lean-to. A dormer gable with a two-light mullioned window, finished with kneelers and coping, is located on the upper storey of the wing. All windows in the wing, with the exception of the canted bay, have 20th-century diamond-shaped leaded panes.

Inside, there is an open-well stone staircase with enriched cast-iron balusters. The east window of the chapel has a pointed single-light window with an internal hood-mould carrier resting on marble columns. The house was built for the Hon. and Rev. Charles L Courtenay, son of the Earl of Devon and Canon of Windsor, at a cost of £1528.