Prince Hall

LYDFORD SX 67 SW 15/19 Prince Hall - - II

Small country house used as hotel. Circa 1780-90. Plastered stone walls. Slate roof with overhanging sprocketted eaves, hipped to left end and gabled to wing. 3 rendered stacks, one at left-hand end, one axial to main range and one at right-hand end of wing. Plan: Main range with cross-wing at right-hand end. Main range has entrance hall running longitudinally along the entrance front with a small room at its right end. Behind the hall, facing the garden, are two principal rooms. The cross wing to the left has a further principal room facing the garden and service rooms at the rear. The staircase is at the front of the entrance hall. Exterior: 2 storeys with attic. Asymmetrical 4:2 window garden front with slightly projecting wing to right. 12-pane hornless sashes, some of which may be original; to the ground floor of the main range are C20 4-pane sashes. Roundheaded window on 2nd floor of wing. Rear entrance front has wing projecting to the left with original tall roundheaded stair window. C20 porch at centre of main range with probably original double 6-panelled doors. Inside door to house has fanlight above. Interior: 2 of the principal rooms have marble chimneypieces with tapering octagonal columns, that in the left-hand end room has its original grate with square opening. This room has a decorative cornice and ceiling band. The central room has a plain moulded band and cornice. The original staircase survives - open string with turned balusters and turned and moulded newels with finials. Other original joinery such as 6-panelled doors and panelled shutters survive. Outside, at the left-hand end of the-house on the entrance side, is a rectangular cobbled courtyard bounded on 3 sides by a tall crenellated wall, opposite to the house is a former coach house, now roofless. Prince Hall is one of the 17 Ancient Tenements of the Forest of Dartmoor first mentioned in documents in 1521. In 1780 a Mr Gullet bought the site and began improvements to the buildings which were completed by Francis Buller a distinguished lawyer and judge when he bought the property in the late 1780s. A print of 1797 depicts the house in a similar form to that in which it survives. Source : W Crossing - "A Hundred Years on Dartmoor" ; Dartmoor : A New study - Enclosure and the Improvers - J S Cocks.

Listing NGR: SX6255874198