Portledge Hotel

Portledge Hotel

A country house, now hotel, with medieval origins and significant 16th and 17th-century extensions and alterations. The front range was remodelled and extended around 1830. The house is constructed with ashlar slatestone to the front, gabled slate roofs with a mid-19th-century bell cupola to the rear, and stone lateral and internal stacks.

The medieval core consists of a great hall, screens passage, and service end, encased by thick walls, located to the right side of the rear. By the early 17th century, the house had developed an enclosed central courtyard with the hall standing on its right side. Around 1830, this courtyard was converted into an octagonal inner hall, the house was refronted in Domestic Tudor and Gothick style, and a projecting right-hand front wing was built. A small enclosed yard stands to the rear of the house.

The front elevation, dating to around 1830, is of two storeys and L-plan form with a projecting right wing. The left-hand range features a triple-gabled front with three windows, each a four-light stone-mullioned window with glazing bars to casements, set beneath tympanum arches above label moulds. A reset mid-16th-century four-light stone-mullioned and round-arched window is positioned to the right. The front right wing has side walls, each containing a two-window range with similar windows. The right-side wall of the front range contains two-light Gothick-style windows. A triple-gabled left side wall, also of around 1830, features hollow-chamfered round-arched windows. The porch has a pointed-arched entry with a rusticated arch and Tuscan pilasters to the inner porch, which contains a 17th-century studded and decoratively carved door set within a moulded wood architrave. A 17th-century studded door with fielded panels is positioned to the right.

Older work lies principally to the rear of the right side wall. A 17th-century two-storey crenellated porch, with a hood mould over an early 17th-century moulded round-arched doorway, adjoins a late 17th-century two-storey gable end to the rear. This gable end features two late 17th-century wood-mullioned and transomed cross windows with leaded lights. To the rear of the house stands an early 17th-century range, remodelled in the early 19th century, and another parallel range of 17th-century origins to the right. These two ranges are separated by a walled yard, which contains part of a 12th-century chamfered round arch to a rear doorway and a gallery of late 16th-century Mannerist-style carved posts supporting a scroll-bracketed wall plate with carved pendentives.

Interior: The 12th-century hall, to the rear right, is encircled by massively thick walls and features a screens passage to the rear with a 15th-century chamfered and round-arched service doorway. The hall was gutted by fire around 1890. The rear yard is flanked by a range to the left which has moulded wood architraves with urn stops, one featuring a plank and studded door. A ground-floor room to the rear, formerly the kitchen, contains mid-18th-century panelled doors and a bolection-moulded architrave to the fireplace, a large bread oven, and two heavy beams. The block to the rear right has early 17th-century stop-chamfered beams and the bases of A-frame trusses. A first-floor room to the rear of the medieval hall contains mid-18th-century panelling with a bolection-moulded overmantle.

In the early 19th century, the central courtyard was infilled by an octagonally-shaped hall with imitation ashlar stucco walls, lit by a large glazed lantern. The hall contains panelled doors with Gothick architraves to the first floor and a Gothick balustrade to the gallery. The beamed ceiling is supported by brattished corbels.

The front range contains several notable features: early 19th-century plasterwork to the ground-floor dining room on the right; early 19th-century Gothick colonettes with foliate capitals to windows on the right. A very fine early 17th-century dog-leg staircase with landing features turned balusters set on a closed string, carved foliate decoration to the turned newels, turned and carved pendentives, and moulded banisters. The landing above the staircase has early 17th-century moulded wood architraves with urn stops, a 17th-century studded door, and fine ribbed plasterwork ceiling with a large central pendentive, thistles of James I, and a heraldic eschutcheon.

A first-floor room to the right contains a fine early 17th-century overmantle with arcaded and trabeated Doric friezes and early 17th-century panelling, each panel having a pedimented aedicule surmounted by urns and flanked by scrolls. A gallery to the left of the stairs has a very fine barrel-vaulted plaster ceiling of around 1700, with cherubs in tympanae at each end holding vases of flowers and swags. Two fine ovals to the ceiling comprise fruit and vegetables to the left, and flowers with masks of Green Men to the right. An early 17th-century fireplace features a heraldic cartouche to the overmantle. A room to the left contains another very fine early 17th-century overmantle with a helmed coat of arms flanked by birds holding trails of flowers and female figures, probably representing Ceres.

The Pine-Coffin family have lived at Portledge since the 12th century. Similarities exist between the plasterwork here and the very fine plasterwork ceiling of around 1684 at the Royal Hotel, Bideford.