Seymour House Tower House

Seymour House Tower House comprises a terrace of three houses dating from the mid-19th century. They are located on Courtenay Park Road in Newton Abbot and form part of the Courtenay Park development, laid out in 1854. The houses are constructed of painted stucco, with a shallow-pitched roof and a stack to the rear of number 9.

The architectural style is Italianate. The houses have double-depth plans, and two storeys each, except for the tower of number 11, which has three. Each house originally had a two-window front. Wide eaves and platbands are present, with banded pilasters to the ground floors and rusticated quoins to the upper floors. Number 9 features a projecting gabled front wing on the right. The first floor of this wing has a semicircular-arched sash window with six panes over six, featuring a raised surround, keystone, imposts, and a bracketed sill. Below this is an eight-pane sash in a raised surround with a cornice on fluted consoles. The doorcase to the left has pilasters with moulded caps and a shallow plain pediment over a four-panel door and a two-pane overlight. To the left of the door is a four-pane sash window, with a six-pane sash above. Number 10 has two plain six-pane sash windows to the first floor and a similar window with fluted consoles to the cornice on the ground floor. Number 11 has a three-storey belvedere tower to the left. This tower has wide bracketed eaves to a shallow hipped roof and pilasters with moulded caps and bracketed sills to triple windows. The semicircular-arched windows on the second floor have keystones, while the first floor window has a shallow plain pediment and the ground floor window a cornice on fluted consoles. The upper floors of the tower’s return have blind windows. The mullions have been removed from the ground-floor front. A 20th-century enclosed porch now covers the door on the right side of number 11. All the windows in number 11 are metal-framed, dated to the 20th century; the interiors of the houses have not been inspected. Seymour House Tower House is a good example of an Italianate terrace, with an asymmetrical composition and a belvedere in the Osborne manner.