The Rock, Including Garden Walls And Gate Piers

BUCKFASTLEIGH

SX7466 STATION ROAD 1011-1/7/140 (North side) 06/01/83 The Rock, including garden walls and gate piers

GV II

Shown as Rock Villa on OS map. Villa, used as retirement home, including garden walls and gate piers. Late 1860s. Colourwashed stuccoed limestone rubble; natural slate roof with lead rolls; stacks with cement-rendered shafts with platbands and very deep cornices. Plan: overall U-plan, the main block with front left and right wing, the right wing a crosswing. Main block with off-centre entrance between the wings into a stair hall, 2 rooms to right, one to left. To rear a separate block parallel to the main range, perhaps the kitchen or a later service block constructed of local grey limestone rubble with an axial stack. Classical style. EXTERIOR: 2 storeys. Asymmetrical 1:3:1-window front. Roof hipped at ends. Very deep eaves with moulded timber brackets, plastered soffit and eaves cornice. Platband at first-floor sill level, front elevation with chanelled rustication below platband. Front door to left of centre with open porch with piers with sunk panels, entablature, projecting cornice and shallow parapet. 4-panel C19 front door with glazed overlight and side panels with coloured patterned engraved glass. 3 central first-floor and 2 ground-floor windows are C19 hornless 12-pane sashes with moulded architraves. The projecting wings each have similar first-floor windows, ground-floor windows are tripartite sashes, 12-pane in the centre, 4 in the outer lights with moulded architraves and cornices above a stuccoed panel. The right return has a scatter of mostly C20 4-pane horned sashes and a glazed door to the fire escape; sashes to left return. INTERIOR: stair with turned balusters and mahogany handrail, good plaster cornice to entrance. Original 4-panel doors with doorcases noted and some chimneypieces. Subsidiary features: walls to the gardens in front and on either side of the house are important to its setting. In front of the house low snecked local grey limestone rubble walls with semicircular capping. Gate piers to entrance are square on plan with sunk panels and shallow pyramidal caps; plainer gate piers to service entrance to right. To right and left the villa garden is enclosed by taller local grey rubble walls with toothed capping, the garden walls to the right extend along Dart Bridge Road. The Rock is a well-preserved mid C19 villa standing at the end of Lower Town and in a visually important position on the edge of the dense urban area.

Listing NGR: SX7429966160