Bishopsteignton House

Bishopsteignton House is a villa, likely dating from around 1870. It is constructed of random grey limestone with freestone and brick dressings, featuring stone stacks with rendered shafts, and a roof of asbestos slates laid with hips, gablets, and gables, accented by deep verges and scalloped bargeboards on moulded corbels. The design is eclectic High Victorian Gothic, incorporating a diverse range of details and rugged outlines.

The house is laid out on a deep, rectangular plan. The south-facing garden elevation showcases an asymmetrical arrangement of canted bays, one rising to an attic with a gable. The left bay contains a ground floor and two first-floor windows, while the right bay is two-storey high. The left bay has large plate glass sashes within shouldered or segmental-headed architraves, with polychromatic relieving arches to ground floor windows and a pointed slit window to the attic. The right bay is rendered and exhibits tall pointed ground floor windows, with the central two divided by a shaft featuring an Early English capital and a quatrefoil frieze at first floor level, also framed by shouldered or segmental headed architraves. The centre of the ground floor has a three-light plate glass sash window with corbelled lintels, while the first floor features two single-light sashes with shouldered architraves.

The east-facing entrance elevation includes a gabled projection to the right containing a handsome glazed verandah with a lean-to roof featuring gables, gablets, and slender arched lights. A tall, pointed doorway is adorned with timber tracery, alongside tall two- and three-light plate glass windows with shouldered architraves to the ground floor and shoulder-headed windows on the first floor, except for a three-light plate glass sash window with a brick relieving arch on the right.

The west elevation has a gableted projection housing a tall, transomed two-light stair window with a pointed arch and cusped upper lights. It also features a shoulder-headed doorway with a projection and a single-light window beside it. A gable fronted to the left end carries two-light windows to both the first and ground floors. To the right of the projection is a doorway with a pointed architrave, and a single-light, shouldered first floor window. The north-facing service block, covered by a two-span roof, is largely complete, exhibiting casement windows with brick and polychromatic dressings, including some transomed windows.

An inspection in 1987 revealed a largely intact interior, including a good open well stair, joinery, and chimney pieces. Bishopsteignton House is the only Gothic villa in the village and is notable for its ambitious design and level of preservation. The building holds group value as a striking example of its type.