Oxton House

Oxton House is a small country house, dating to 1781-91 and built by the Reverend John Swete. It was altered around 1830 in a Greek Revival style, and subsequently modified in the late 20th century when it was converted into flats. The house is rendered with a slate roof hidden behind a parapet, and features stacks with rendered shafts topped with moulded cornices.

The house has a rectangular plan with three rooms wide, featuring a central entrance leading into a heated hall, with principal rooms on either side. A stair hall is located to the rear right of the entrance hall, and service rooms are to the rear left. The symmetrical front (east) elevation has two-story canted bays on the left and right, each with three windows, and three windows in the centre, which is fronted by a five-bay Greek portico with fluted Doric columns and a triglyph frieze. The front door is a 19th-century panelled double door set within deep reveals, flanked by 12-pane sash windows. Other windows are similar sashes. A return elevation formerly had a second Greek portico overlooking the garden, and also includes sash windows and two later battlemented ground floor bays. The right return has one 20th-century ground floor French window and one first-floor sash. A former stable block to the right has round-headed recesses and remnants of a pediment above a dentil frieze at its east end.

The interior, while not thoroughly inspected, retains plaster cornices, marble chimney-pieces (with a later 19th-century marble chimney-piece on the ground floor to the right), shutters, panelled doors, and deep skirting boards. However, there are also late 20th-century Georgian-style doors and cornices. A fine open-well staircase features an ornamental iron balustrade with wreathed handrail; a pair of Ionic columns in the stair hall are of uncertain date. The Reverend Swete documented his ten-year building project for Oxton House in his “Picturesque Sketches of Devon,” which includes watercolours of the house before the Greek Revival alterations.