Lillycombe House and Retaining Wall to Terrace is a Grade II listed building in the Exmoor National Park local planning authority area, England. First listed on 2 January 1986. House. 1 related planning application.
Lillycombe House and Retaining Wall to Terrace
- WRENN ID
- south-quartz-furze
- Grade
- II
- Local Planning Authority
- Exmoor National Park
- Constituency
- Tiverton and Minehead MP: Rachel Gilmour (LD)
- Country
- England
- Date first listed
- 2 January 1986
- Type
- House
- Address
- Lillycombe House and Retaining Wall to Terrace, Oare, Somerset, TA24 8JP
- OS grid reference
- SS 821 473
- Coordinates
- 51.21328, -3.68888
- Source
- Historic England listing
Description
Lillycombe House, built in 1912 and designed by Lady Lovelace with assistance from C F A Voysey, features a retaining wall to the terrace. The house is roughcast over rubble and has hipped roofs made of West Somerset slate, with slight bell-cast eaves and overhanging edges. The design includes bargeboards on the gabled bays, a large square roughcast chimney stack on the right, and a tall octagonal roughcast stack rising from the eaves on the left.
The structure is L-shaped and consists of two storeys with an asymmetrical four-bay south front. Many of the windows have cambered lintels and consist of multi-paned casements. The first and third bays on the left project with gabled roofs, while a 2-light casement is located to the right. The ground floor features casements flanking a single-storey hipped roof garden room, with a retaining wall of the terrace displaying 1:4:1 lights and two casements to the right. Pevsner notes a "handsome south verandah on stone pillars," which is unmistakably the work of Voysey, suggesting that the sun room may have been completed after 1958.
The entrance is located on the north front via a gabled wing, which is unusual because the gable end wall and returns are higher than the roof level behind, though it is slated for about one metre to conceal this design flaw. The interior is described as disappointing, lacking contemporary fittings, except for a stick stair in the entrance hall and a few ventilation grills designed by Voysey. The house is part of a notable group of buildings to the east, and it appears that Voysey was brought in late to assist Lady Lovelace with her designs, as indicated by the awkwardness of the entrance facade gable.
Local climate
Lillycombe House and Retaining Wall to Terrace sits in one of the wettest parts of the UK, with an average of 1,180 mm of rain a year. This makes it wetter than 90% of listed buildings in the UK. Its exposure to wind-driven rain is greater than that of 97% of listed buildings.
It experiences an average of 9 freeze-thaw cycles a year, fewer than 92% of listed buildings. Of these, 4 follow at least 1 mm of rain in the preceding 48 hours. Average temperatures at this location have risen by 0.3°C per decade since 1991.
Averages for 1991–2020; temperature trend 1991–2025. Figures describe the wider area (a grid cell of roughly 10 km), not the individual site. Contains modified Copernicus Climate Change Service information 2026.
More on this building
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- No EPC on record for this property
- No sale records on file
- Related listed building consents — 1 application
- Detailed attributes — period, style, materials, features
- Flood risk assessment
- Radon risk assessment
- Weather exposure and heating demand — rain and frost month by month and year by year, wind direction, solar and humidity
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