Oakfield

OAKFIELD

House, circa 1850, partly remodelled in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with some alterations of 1936. Located on Exeter Road outside Chudleigh Town as part of a row of 19th-century villas.

Built of local limestone rubble, cement rendered and blocked out, with rear modifications and billiard room in yellow brick. The roof is slate with a central valley, gabled to front and rear, with rendered stacks. The building displays modest Tudor details externally. Two storeys and attic throughout.

The house is double depth in plan, originally three rooms wide but now two rooms wide following late 19th and early 20th-century remodelling. Principal rooms face east, while the principal entrance front faces south, featuring a porte-cochere. The entrance hall leads into a very large stair hall with an open well stair positioned behind the principal rooms and between left and right crosswings. The left-hand crosswing contains the dining room, the right-hand crosswing the services, linked by a service corridor under the stairs. The house has clearly been remodelled and may originally have been U-plan with a smaller stair hall, which was enlarged in the late 19th and early 20th centuries to fill the entire space between the crosswings. A single-storey flat-roofed billiard room adjoining the left crosswing dates to the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Two right-hand rooms at the front appear to have been repartitioned, possibly in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and now form one room.

The three-bay garden (east) front features left and right gables with ornamental bargeboards. The centre bay is recessed at first-floor level with a two-bay timber balcony featuring Tudor arched openings with quatrefoils in the spandrels, a trellis frontal, and vertical trellis panels. Fleur de lis cresting above the Tudor arches is probably a replacement or addition. Below the balcony, the centre bay projects slightly with a timber canopy and two two-light transomed French windows with glazing bars and hoodmoulds. Similar, slightly larger French windows to the left and right-hand bays also have hoodmoulds. First-floor windows to left and right are 16-pane sashes with a heavy central vertical glazing bar and four blocked panes above the sash, with hoodmoulds. A central gabled attic dormer features ornamental bargeboards, a finial, and three-light small pane casements.

The three-bay south elevation is the principal entrance front, with ornamental bargeboards to the centre gable and left and right verges, and rusticated quoins to left, right, and the projecting central room. Above a Tudor arched porte-cochere with clustered columns stands a central half-glazed front door with margin glazing, a rectangular fanlight with etched glass, moulded architrave, and panelled reveals and soffit. The ground-floor window to the left is tall and transomed with glazing bars and a hoodmould. The first-floor window to the left is a 16-pane sash with a heavy central vertical glazing bar and hoodmould. The room over the porte-cochere has a canted oriel window with moulded cornice and four-light casements, eight panes per light. Small-pane windows with hoodmoulds are in the right-hand bay, with two attic dormers featuring ornamental bargeboards and pinnacles with finials.

The three-bay west elevation is gabled to left and right with brick in the centre, featuring a large transomed four-light stair window with late 19th and early 20th-century stained glass in the head. Three 20-pane sashes are in the left bay; the right bay is blank.

The interior contains numerous features of the early 19th century and late 19th and early 20th centuries, including plaster cornices, marble chimney-pieces, and a late 19th and early 20th-century stair with turned balusters. The service wing is paved with Purbeck marble.

White's Devon Directory mentions the house in 1850, and there is a date of 1851 on the lead flashing on the roof.