Harcombe House Including Steps At The Rear

Harcombe House is a large house built in 1912 for Edward Chaning Wills, Baronet, and his wife. The house was constructed with the assistance of A.F. Woodman of Exeter, who served as builder, and L.A. Lucas of Exeter, who served as architect, as recorded on a datestone. Some internal modifications were carried out in the 1980s when the building was converted to a fire service convalescent home.

The house is constructed of local grey limestone rubble with Ham Hill stone dressings. The service wing and subsidiary rooms feature moulded brick dressings. The roof is slated, and there are seven stone rubble chimney stacks with Ham Hill coping. The right-hand end of the house incorporates girder and concrete construction to the first floor.

The architectural style is an eccentric mixture of Jacobean elements (coped gables and mullioned windows) combined with Vernacular Revival features, evident in the variety of roof designs. The building is planned in an L-shape, with the main range facing south and a rear left service wing at right angles to it. The principal entrance is positioned right of centre on the south front and leads to an entrance hall with the main staircase contained in a gabled wing to the rear. To the left of the entrance hall, a service corridor behind the principal rooms provides access to the rear left service wing. A service courtyard at the left end connects to a detached subsidiary service block. The ground floor contains three principal rooms: two to the left of the entrance hall and one to the right. Late 20th-century modifications involved re-partitioning of first-floor rooms, the ground-floor left room, and conversion of the principal centre room to a bar.

The south front is two storeys and asymmetrical across eight bays. Two coped gables stand either side of centre, flanking a two-storey castellated bay to the left and a projecting single-storey Ham Hill porch to the right. The porch has a parapet rising as a pediment above a Tudor arched moulded outer doorway. To the right of the porch is a gabled bay containing a single-storey canted bay with transomed mullioned windows and an ogee-headed doorway in the centre. Mullioned windows of varying sizes (one to seven lights) are distributed throughout, with lead tent roofs on the first-floor windows in the gabled bays and the attic window in the right-hand bay. A first-floor bow window above the porch has a peaked slate roof. At the left end of the south elevation stands a single-storey projecting bay with ogee-headed windows on the south and east sides, buttressed and decorated with carved stone reliefs. Between this bay and the porch runs a timber verandah with a glazed roof, featuring segmental arched openings on posts.

The rear staircase wing has a two-span roof, one span half-hipped to the rear and the second with eaves swept down to first-floor level. A four-light mullioned and transomed staircase window lights this section. The west elevation of the service wing displays two gables to the west, with mullioned windows and Ham Hill lintels and moulded brick mullions. Stone gateposts with ball finials at the left end of the main range lead into the service yard.

The interior is largely intact with unexpectedly modest features. The entrance hall features a triple stone arch at the rear, the left arch providing access to the service corridor and the centre arch giving access to the staircase. The stair has stick balusters and a timber arcade to the top landing with shallow arches supported on reeded timber piers with Ionic capitals. Stone chimneypieces, original doors, and decorated plaster cornices throughout the house feature a variety of scallop shell and foliage designs. Edward Wills, who was fond of hunting, reportedly had his study adjacent to the gun room at the left end of the main range, where the cornices are decorated with rabbits and pheasants.

Semi-circular steps at the rear of the house formerly provided access to a terraced garden. The house presents an imposing composition of 1912, very complete externally and with most of its interior features remaining intact.