Heasley House Hotel With Flanking Walls And Garden Railings Adjoining To South

This early 19th century house, now a hotel, was originally built as a mine captain’s house, likely associated with mining activity around Heasley Mill, where copper was mined in the early 19th century. The nearby Bamfldye Mine, reopened in the early 19th century and active by the 1840s, is thought to be the mine to which this house relates.

The house is built of rendered walls, likely over stone rubble, and has a half-hipped scantle-slate roof with brick stacks, one rebuilt and the other truncated. It was built set back between two earlier houses, North Molton’s Yen Cottage and Heasley Cottage, to create a symmetrical appearance, although these cottages are at different angles, and are screened from the main house by tall, splayed wing walls enclosing a small front garden with iron railings. The front elevation is symmetrical with three bays, featuring plastic glazing bar sashes (likely replacements for earlier wooden sashes) with raised lintels carved to resemble voussoirs. The central recessed entrance has a six-panel door with a cast-iron knocker and radial fanlight, set within a painted wooden Doric doorcase. Steps approach the door.

The rear elevation features boxed four-pane sashes and a central, round-arched staircase window on the first floor. Inside, the entrance passage has a dado rail, and early 19th century six-panelled doors with moulded architraves lead to the rooms. The left-hand ground floor room has an early 19th century marble fireplace with paired pilasters, a frieze with anthemion ornament and a patera at the center, and depressed-arched recesses on either side. A rear room, potentially a former kitchen, features large open fireplaces with keyed beaded surrounds and mantelshelves, as well as meat hooks in the ceiling. A three-flight staircase to the rear has an open string with cut brackets, a beaded string band, rectangular-section stick balusters (three per tread), a ramped moulded handrail, square newel posts, a turned foot newel post and a ramped dado rail. A first floor staircase window has beaded splayed jambs. The first floor rooms have not been inspected. The front garden has a low stone retaining wall with early 19th century wrought-iron railings and a pair of central gates with urn finials. One gate has a small wheel attached to a semi-circular rail, likely a later alteration. Two-light attic casements are in the gable ends.