Periton Mead, with courtyard walls, piers and cobbled surface, raised terrace and steps

Periton Mead is a small country house built in stages between approximately 1915 and 1925. The architect was Percy Morley Horder, who designed it for C S Orwin. The main house was constructed around 1915–22, with the majority of the south-west range added around 1925. The property includes its original courtyard walls, piers and cobbled surface, along with a raised terrace and steps.

Materials and Construction

The house is built of random-coursed Cleeve stone with heavy quoins, window surrounds and other ashlar dressings in Doulting stone from Norton-sub-Hamdon. The roof is slated with material from Treborough, and the chimney stacks are stone. Ventilation holes formed of horizontally-laid slate appear in the gables and above some door and window openings. The iron-framed casement windows are replacements. Most of the range projecting from the south-west corner is rendered.

Plan

The main building forms a loose C-plan (or E-plan if the projecting entrance bay is included), arranged around a courtyard to the west. The principal entrance is in the central range and opens onto the courtyard. An additional block sits at the south-west corner, with a slightly later range to its south and west. A later extension attached to the south wall of this range contains a ground-floor workshop but is not of special interest.

West Front

The two-storey west front presents an imposing appearance in Tudor style. The projecting central entrance bay is flanked by wings stepped outwards in blocks that enclose the east side of the courtyard. The walls are topped by a capped parapet, behind which are hipped slate roofs. Ashlar mullioned windows of between two and four lights, protected by dripstones, are arranged symmetrically.

The principal entrance at the centre is set within a full-height projecting porch with a gable surmounted by a ball finial. The Tudor-arched doorcase has a stopped convex moulding and a moulded cornice. The oak door also has a Tudor-arched head, with fillets studded with iron nails, long iron strap hinges and a decorative wrought-iron latch. Above the door is a two-light window, and above that a two-light gable window with an eared hoodmould.

The bays flanking the entrance have pairs of two-light windows to the ground floor (lighting the hall) and four-light windows above (lighting the corridor). The western ends of the side ranges are canted towards the west gable ends, each of which has a gable window. A mounting block is set against the southern canted wall. The additional block extending from the south-west wing contains a subsidiary entrance with an oak door.

East Front

The east front is more vernacular in style. Four flanking gabled bays are stepped out gradually from the central entrance bay, with tall stacks rising from this side of the roofs. The entrance is sheltered by a low overhanging roof slope, with a large dormer window above. The doorcase, with a complex moulded frame, is flanked by two-light windows, the three elements linked by a hoodmould.

The bays to either side have five-light windows divided horizontally, with smaller undivided five-light windows above. In the outer bays are divided four-light windows, with that to the south incorporating a door to the former Drawing Room. Above are five-light windows. All windows on this elevation have hoodmoulds.

South Front

The south-facing garden front has projecting gabled end bays, with the central section of three bays. A roll moulding runs above the ground floor, stepped over the central doorway and forming hoodmoulds over the windows. Above this, over the door, is a recessed panel, with a two-light first-floor window above. The outer bays of this set-back middle section hold three-light windows. The projecting bays have four-light windows, the lower ones being divided. The west side of the garden is enclosed by the east walls of the additional block and the south-west range, with an oriel window in the additional block.

South-West Range

The rendered, gabled south-west range largely dates from between 1923 and 1929 and originally included stabling and garaging, though no wide openings remain. This section is differentiated from the rest of the house by the current render, which is probably a later addition. However, the corbelled gables with slated ventilation holes, the stone-mullioned windows to the north and westernmost elevations, and the form of the stacks link it stylistically with the main building. A flat corbelled arch with timber bressumer leads to a yard to the south. The windows in the southern part of this section are metal-framed replacements.

Interior

The interior has received considerable alteration from its long use as a school, but the overall plan remains legible and a number of high-quality historic features survive. The ground-floor plan was published by Country Life in 1923, making it possible to refer to the ground-floor rooms by their original names.

The entrance porch leads into the Hall, with the principal rooms arranged along the east side of the house and accessed from the Hall. The original oak doors to these rooms have been lost. The Hall is floored with Treborough slate slabs; the window sills here, as elsewhere, are also of slate. The Hall now contains modern partitions and a large enclosed reception desk, together with a false ceiling; the principal ground-floor rooms have also received some reconfiguration.

The Inner Hall is situated to the south-east of the Hall. The arched embrasure in the north-west corner replaces a former doorway into the Hall. The Inner Hall formerly contained the main doorway to the eastern terrace, but the westernmost section now forms a passageway between the Hall and the rear door. It retains its large stone fireplace in Tudor style, with the shelf supported on brackets in the form of inverted obelisks and a moulded Tudor-arched opening with Tudor roses to the stops and slates laid in herringbone to the cheeks. This room has oak floorboards and a coved cornice.

The Dining Room in the north-east corner of the central range has been considerably enlarged by removal of the passage that formerly ran to its west (providing access to the Dining Room and Hall from the kitchen quarters) and incorporation of the pantry that was formerly to the west of the passage. In the north-west corner is a large stone fireplace, the Tudor-arched opening being similar to that in the Inner Hall, but the frieze above having Tudor roses between fluted panels beneath a moulded cornice. The interior of the fireplace is in characteristic Arts and Crafts manner, with a curved hood and cheeks in herringbone slate and a lozenge to the centre of the hood of red brick. This fireplace formerly formed the focus of a sitting or dining area, but removal of a store-room to the west has opened out this area. The enlarged Dining Room now has a false ceiling, so the cornice and beam visible in a Country Life photograph cannot be seen.

The Drawing Room in the south-east corner of the central range has a fireplace in Georgian style and a coved cornice. The former Boudoir to the east of the Hall has lost its fireplace but retains its moulded cornice. The Library to the south has a suite of built-in bookcases and panelling with an integrated fire surround in Georgian manner; the room has a moulded cornice. The former Playroom to the south-west has been divided but retains a simple fireplace, the interior having a curved hood and cheeks in herringbone slate.

The northern part of the main house contains the kitchens. The main kitchen, to the north of the Dining Room, does not retain historic features, but the smaller kitchen offices to the north-west have original tiling and slate floors. The former Servants' Hall has a plain fireplace of layered slate.

The main stair is to the south, the entrance to the stair well having a simple wooden frame of pilasters and lintel. The open-well stair, constructed of oak, has a closed string and strong plain newel posts with geometric pendentives. The balusters have been boxed in, but a pair of turned balusters between the starter newels suggest that the remaining balusters are turned. The first-floor landing has been enclosed. The upper corridor, extending along the west side of the house, retains its original form, lit by windows with slate sills, but the bedrooms and living areas to the east, north and south have been reconfigured and do not retain historic features.

The eastern part of the slightly later south-west range is built on higher ground, and the two-storey building is accessed by a stair from the south-west end of the main house. The stair itself is plain and the rooms in this part of the building, which do not have historic features, are of lesser interest. The westernmost section of this range was not inspected internally.

Courtyard and Terrace

The courtyard to the west of the entrance front is enclosed on the west and north sides by a stone wall with square piers at the opening to the west. The surface of the courtyard is cobbled, laid in a geometric design.

On the north side of the wall enclosing the courtyard is a machinery garage, which is not of special interest.

The east front of the house opens onto a raised paved terrace surrounded by a buttressed rubble wall coped with slate and accessed by steps.

A number of late-20th-century buildings have been erected on the site, connected with Periton Mead's phase as a school: the head teacher's house to the south-west of the main house, a large single-storey C-plan teaching block further to the south, two temporary structures located on the tarmacked area to the east of the main house and three small sheds to the north of the house. None of these buildings are of special interest.