Sandford Orleigh

Sandford Orleigh

Mansion of 1832, altered and extended to the left in the late 19th century. Built in the Picturesque Gothic style with an irregular plan.

The building is constructed of ashlar and render beneath slate roofs with various chimney stacks. The south-facing entrance front comprises four blocks arranged across a two-storey range of six windows. The rightmost block features a large projecting two-storey porch of late 19th-century date, positioned to the right of centre. This porch has parapets to its returns rising to a coped gable at the front, which is crowned with a stone cross at its apex. The first floor contains a tall two-light stone-mullioned sash window with three brackets to the sill. The ground floor is dominated by crocketed angle buttresses flanking a wide shallow-pointed arch with engaged shafts rising to capitals, which frames a pair of doors. The return walls contain similar arches framing windows.

The two bays to the left feature a hipped roof and parapet. The first floor has two windows with label moulds over carved quatrefoil friezes and plate-glass sash windows. Below, a crenellated rectangular bay contains a label mould over three similar windows with overlights, probably of late 19th-century date. A late 19th-century single-storey conservatory with fully glazed walls and decorative cast-iron corners to its overlights occupies the angle to the right of the door.

The eastern return garden front displays three coped gables. The leftmost gable features a flat-roofed two-storey crenellated canted bay with 6/6-pane sash windows in similar architraves with label moulds over quatrefoil friezes on the first floor and plate-glass sash windows in moulded architraves to the ground floor. A late 19th-century two-storey canted bay with crenellated parapet to the right has similar first-floor windows with triangular aprons and moulded architraves to plate-glass sashes to the ground floor. A single-storey parapeted range of late 19th-century date between the outer bays also includes a canted bay with comparable windows.

The central block of the south front contains 6/6-pane sashes on each floor to the left, each with label mould and quatrefoil frieze. The central door is surmounted by the motto of the Jeffries family beneath a semi-elliptical hoodmould: "FIAT JUSTITIA RUAT COELUM". Two lancets with hoodmoulds appear on each floor to the right. The rear of this block has similar windows to the left and a projecting coped gabled wing to the right. This wing contains a flat-roofed two-storey shallow canted bay with stone mullions and four Tudor-arched windows with sunk spandrels to the front, blind windows to the sides of the first floor, and elaborate carved aprons decorated with quatrefoils and mouchettes.

The two blocks to the left of the south front have 8/8-pane sash windows to the first floor and a flat arch to a carriageway to the inside left, which opens into a courtyard. The ground floor right contains a 6/6-pane sash window with label mould and frieze. The rear elevation is constructed of small sandstone rubble and features paired octagonal shafts to crenellated axial chimney stacks. To the rear left stands a square crenellated base supporting an unroofed octagonal crenellated tower with a pierced lancet to each facet.

The interior of the central and left-hand blocks displays mid-18th-century styling, while the right-hand block is of late 19th-century date with polychromatic tiles to the floors of the porch and hall. These are separated by 20th-century double doors beneath a fine mid-19th-century wide segmental-arched fanlight with an oval pane to the centre flanked by four mouchettes. An open-well open-string staircase with turned balusters rises from the hall.

The room to the ground-floor front right contains a spectacular arcade of four granite piers supporting cusped pendant arches—semi-elliptical to the centre and flanked by shallow pointed arches—beneath a panelled strapwork ceiling with moulded ribs. A former billiard room to the rear contains a fireplace reputed to have been made from the alter screen and reredos of St Laurence's Chapel (1520), although much of its detail dates stylistically some hundred years later. The overmantel features arabesques to its panels beneath a cornice over two rows of six vertical carved panels articulated by caryatids, some now missing. The surround is similar and incorporates lion masks. The overmantel has since been relocated to the Newton Abbot Town and GWR Museum.

The house was built by George Templer, a local industrialist, who purchased the screen at auction. The entrance hall was originally constructed by Templer as a Porte Cochere open on three sides. This was later enclosed by Sir Samuel Baker (1821-1893) when he built his conservatory for tropical plants here in the 1870s. Baker was one of the period's most celebrated explorers, having discovered the source of the Nile and served as Governor of Sudan.