Culver House

Culver House is a large house, now partly subdivided into flats, built in 1836 and significantly extended in 1875 by the renowned architect Alfred Waterhouse for Edward Byrom. The building is constructed of dressed volcanic trap with freestone dressings, and features slate roofs with gables at the ends and to the front and rear. The chimneys are notable for their tall brick clustered octagonal shafts with moulded caps.

The original 1836 range to the south is built in Tudor Gothic style and retains some very complete period interiors. Waterhouse's 1875 addition to the north, though more asymmetrical, is remarkably sympathetic to the earlier building, respecting its materials, string course, plinth, and fenestration. The principal rooms, except the dining room, face the garden and are housed in the 1836 range. This earlier section features a rear spine corridor with a large stair well at the back. A side entrance to the rear right of the 1836 range has a small vestibule. The 1875 addition extends the rear wing and entrance side and largely contained service rooms and additional accommodation. The dining room was refurbished in the 1930s with high quality woodwork brought from the demolished Byrom Hall and Kersall Hall.

The house is two storeys and attic. The asymmetrical entrance elevation to the east comprises seven windows beneath seven gables with ornamental bargeboards, mostly with pendants. The left-hand five gables belong to the 1836 design, while the two right-hand gables and an oriel window at the extreme right are Waterhouse additions. Three gables and an oriel window above the front door are corbelled out at first floor level; Waterhouse's oriel, topped by a pyramidal ornamental slated roof, is more heavily corbelled above a short buttress. A 4-centred arched stone front doorway is flanked by arched 1-light windows. A second doorway right of centre may be a 1940s addition made when the right-hand end was converted into flats. The mullioned windows in the 1836 range have either 4-centred arched lights or square heads, a design continued by Waterhouse. A curious feature is a ground floor blind gable with bargeboards.

The garden elevation to the west of the 1836 range is more nearly symmetrical, with gabled projections to left and right and two gabled dormers in the centre. Stone mullioned windows include a two-storey bay window to the right with a transomed ground floor window, and a first floor oriel window to the left. The 3-light window below the oriel is a twentieth-century insertion. Waterhouse's addition to the left comprises a series of picturesquely gabled blocks including a single-storey dairy. The south elevation features two two-storey bays with mullioned windows added by Waterhouse.

The interior of the 1836 range is very complete, with a chimney-piece, joinery, decorated plaster ceilings, and quatrefoil-decorated skirting boards and doorcases. One plaster ceiling probably dates from the 1870s or later. A fine dog-leg open-well staircase has turned balusters and evidence of alteration; its ceiling bears painted decoration probably by Waterhouse, though the hammerbeam roof is original to 1836. Pictorial stained glass of saints formerly in the stair window is retained by the owner. The dining room is panelled with sixteenth-century panelling from Byrom Hall (demolished 1894) and features a splendid Jacobean chimney-piece from Kersall Hall (demolished 1830). The dairy retains a fairly complete set of ornamental tiles, all dating from 1875.

Waterhouse's original signed and dated plans, elevations, and details are in the owner's possession, as are two paintings of the house showing the 1836 building: an oil of the 1860s and a watercolour of 1845. Waterhouse's design for a spectacular tower over the dairy was never executed. This is a fine, large two-phase nineteenth-century house and represents probably Waterhouse's only known work in Devon.