The Admiral Blake Museum

The Admiral Blake Museum, Bridgwater

House, now a museum, dating from the late 15th or early 16th century, remodelled in the early 17th century and refronted in the 19th century. The building is constructed of limestone rubble with some 18th-century irregular English-bond brick to the right and Ham Hill stone, with painted rough-cast to the first floor and a pantile roof with stone stacks to the gable ends and brick stacks to the rear.

The building follows a through-passage plan of 2 bays flanked by 2 half bays, possibly originally L-shaped, now with a double-depth plan. It rises to 2 storeys and has a 3-window range. At eaves level, the first floor features late 19th-century two-light casement windows with Tudor arches to each light and some 20th-century timber-framing to the left. Similar full-height late 19th-century windows with 20th-century timber lintels and 19th-century brick jambs flank late 19th-century four-panel double doors with Tudor-arched panels to the top. A smaller similar window sits to the far right. Set into the wall either side of the window to the left are moulded Ham Hill stone jambs and the corners of smoothed-off label moulds to former stone-mullioned windows. A stone jamb to a former door appears to the left of the present door, and a blocked door with timber lintel is to the right.

The rear right wing is of red Wembdon Hill rubblestone and blue lias limestone rubble. It has a 19th-century outshut, mostly brick, with a pantile roof to the rear. The right return has a slit window with Ham Hill stone quoins to the first floor and the top of a 2-light stone-mullioned window. The late 18th- or early 19th-century rear left wing is of Flemish-bond brick with a roof parallel to the front. It features semi-elliptical brick arches over 20th-century two-light casement windows, a lean-to with 2-light glazing-bar casements, and a half-glazed door with stained-glass margin panes.

The ground-floor room to the left has hollow-chamfered beams to a 6-panel ceiling with early 17th-century plaster moulding to the edge and a roundel to the centre of each panel. The hall is stone-flagged with 19th-century wainscoting in 17th-century style, below a dado rail and two 2-panel doors with raised-and-fielded panels to the right. An early 19th-century staircase with stick balusters, swept rail and turned newels stands to the rear left, with 19th-century wainscoting.

The former through-passage, now part of the room to the right of the door, has a heavy unmoulded beam to the right. The rest of this room has a hollow-chamfered quartered ceiling. A late 15th- or early 16th-century open fire to the right has a hollow-moulded shallow Tudor-arched oak lintel on Ham Hill stone chamfered imposts with moulded jambs. To its left is a late 15th- or early 16th-century two-light stone-mullioned window with cinquefoil heads to each light, looking onto a further room. To the right is a 20th-century doorway with steps down to that room, a former 19th-century cottage, now an exhibition room. A room to the rear right has a 2-light timber window frame with a chamfered stone lintel, a diagonally-set vertical iron bar to each light and some thinner horizontal bars; it is bricked up on the outside.

The first floor spans 6 bays with arch-braced trusses and exposed timber cross-wall frame with tension braces to the left and front corner. The right-hand wall has a Ham Hill stone shallow-pointed lintel and jambs to an open fireplace to the right of centre. The first-floor room to the right has 2 exposed panels with 17th-century graffiti including a ship, a man on horseback, shoes and a spinning wheel.

Admiral Robert Blake, born 1599 and died 1657, was born and lived in this house. A scholar at Wadham College, Oxford, upon his father's death he abandoned his literary career to oversee the education and settlement of his 13 brothers and sisters. Involved in the politics of Church and State, he became Member of Parliament for Bridgwater in the Short Parliament dissolved by Charles I and for Taunton in 1645. A supporter of the parliamentary cause, he distinguished himself in the sieges of Bodmin, Lansdown, Bristol and Taunton. In 1649, at the age of 50, he took command of a ship for the first time and until his death was regarded with an enthusiasm bordering on idolatry. His body was embalmed and placed in a new vault in Henry VII's Chapel in Westminster Abbey, but in 1660 Charles II ordered it to be removed and thrown into a pit. In 1889, the house was described as "an old and interesting structure, two stories high, built of blue lias stone, with walls of immense thickness, heavy stone stairs, oak wainscots and decorated ceilings; altogether a habitation of Tudor origin, and of unmistakable importance in those times."