The Rock, Including Garden Walls And Gate Piers

The Rock is a villa, dating to the late 1860s, including garden walls and gate piers. It is located on Station Road, Buckfastleigh, and was originally known as Rock Villa, as indicated on Ordnance Survey maps. The villa is currently used as a retirement home.

The building is constructed of colourwashed stuccoed limestone rubble, with a natural slate roof featuring lead rolls. Stacks have cement-rendered shafts with platbands and very deep cornices. The plan is an overall U-shape, with a main block flanked by front left and right wings, the right wing being a crosswing. The main block incorporates an off-centre entrance, situated between the wings, leading into a stair hall. To the right of the hall are two rooms, and one room is located to the left. A separate block, constructed of local grey limestone rubble with an axial stack, runs parallel to the rear of the main range, possibly serving as a kitchen or later service block.

The villa is designed in a classical style. The front elevation has an asymmetrical 1:3:1 window arrangement. The roof is hipped at each end. Deep eaves incorporate moulded timber brackets, a plastered soffit and an eaves cornice. A platband runs along the first-floor sill level, and the lower portion of the front elevation features channelled rustication. A front door, accessed via an open porch with piers featuring sunk panels, an entablature, a projecting cornice and a shallow parapet, is located to the left of the centre. The door itself is a C19 four-panel design with an overlight featuring coloured patterned engraved glass and side panels. First-floor windows are C19 hornless 12-pane sashes with moulded architraves; the projecting wings have similar first-floor windows, while the ground-floor windows are tripartite sashes, with 12 panes in the centre and 4 panes in the outer lights, all with moulded architraves and cornices above stuccoed panels. The right return has a number of mostly C20 4-pane horned sashes and a glazed fire escape door; sashes are also present on the left return.

The interior features a stair with turned balusters and a mahogany handrail, along with good plaster cornices in the entrance hall. Original four-panel doors, doorcases, and some chimney pieces are noted.

The garden walls, constructed of snecked local grey limestone rubble with semicircular capping to the front and sides, are significant to the property’s setting. Square gate piers with sunk panels and shallow pyramidal caps mark the main entrance; plainer gate piers are present at a service entrance to the right. Taller local grey rubble walls, with toothed capping, enclose the garden to the right and left, with the right-hand garden walls extending along Dart Bridge Road.

The Rock is a well-preserved mid-19th century villa situated at the end of Lower Town, in a visually important position on the edge of a dense urban area.