The Folly Including Boundary Walls On North And South Sides

The Folly is a late 19th-century building, originally part of Wooda on Torridge Hill, later converted into a house around 1982. It may be an enlargement of an earlier structure, possibly dating from 1848, with a north wing added around 1982. The walls are stone rubble with cream-brick dressings, with the west side rendered. The roof is not visible from below. The building has a small rectangular shape with splayed corners on the east side, and an added wing on the north. It stands two storeys high on a high plinth, with the addition being single-storeyed. The facade is battlemented and situated on high ground overlooking Bideford and the River Torridge, with a sheer rocky drop on the north side, cut through around 1825.

The south front has a three-window range, including one window on the splayed corner; the east front has one window, another on the farther splayed corner, and a third window on the north front. The windows are pointed-arched, with the exception of a flat-headed window on the upper storey of the east front. They have plain glazing and cream-brick surrounds on the upper storey. Raised stone bands are present above the plinth and each upper storey, the top one being a cream-brick battlemented parapet. The stone bands do not extend to the left-hand window of the south front, and the corresponding part of the north front is merely rendered. Cream-brick quoins are on the west end of the south front and all battlements.

A stone tablet, discovered when the foundations were dug, is set into the wall of the addition and bears the inscription "G. RICHARDS 1848". A section of battlemented stone-rubble wall is on the north side of the garden, along the cliff edge. A similar wall abuts the house on the south side, but the west section of the wall has more crudely formed battlements constructed of upright blocks of stone. The building does not appear on the Bideford Tithe map of 1841. George Richards, an actuary, lived at Wooder in 1850.