Sharlands House including front wall and former stable

Summary

A rural, detached house and stable in a revived Georgian style. It was designed in 1912 for the painter and silversmith Thomas A Falcon RBA by his brother-in-law G A E Schwabe, a member of the Manchester Society of Architects and Northern Art Workers' Guild. It was tenanted from the beginning by their other brother-in-law Dr F R Elliston-Wright, village GP and amateur naturalist.

Reasons for Designation

Sharlands House with front garden wall and former stable, Braunton, Devon, of 1912, is listed at Grade II for the following principal reasons:

Architectural interest:
* as a bold and neat design in a free Georgian revival style, in a rural edge-of-town setting;
* as a well-constructed dwelling, expressing Arts and Crafts principles of using high quality materials, that survives well with good detailing and fittings .

Historic interest:
* for the association with Godfrey AE Schwabe, architect and craftsman of note associated with the internationally renowned architect Edgar Wood;
* for the association with Thomas A Falcon RBA, particularly noted for his Devon and Dartmoor landscapes, whose art formed a key part of the interior design;
* the house, and people associated with it, represent an era when well-regarded artistic, cultural and scientific enclaves flourished in the English countryside away from metropolitan centres, particularly in the south-west.

Group value:
* with the detached stable that is of complementary design and provides a fitting companion building from the period prior to the common use of the motor car.

History

Sharlands House was built in 1912 on previously undeveloped land on the western edge of Braunton. The empty plot on the corner of Sharlands Lane and Pixie Lane is shown on the Second Edition Ordnance Survey Map of 1904, a year before it was bought by Julie Falcon (nee Harper) who, with her husband Thomas Adolphus Falcon, a painter and silversmith, commissioned her brother, Godfrey Albert Edward (Bertie) Schwabe (1877-1960), to design the house and stable. Schwabe was an Associate of the Manchester School and worked in Edgar Wood’s practice in Manchester until he moved to Devon in around 1910. He was also a member of the Northern Art Workers' Guild, of which Wood was the founder.

Unsigned drawings of the house, gardens and adjacent stable (in the possessio of the present owner), presumably by Schwabe, show the design as executed. The interior decoration included eight decorative panels for the drawing room, painted by Falcon, four of which remain in situ. Four others, now in local museums, were depictions of Devon towns in the style of the period, and reproductions have been fixed in place of the originals. A copper chimneypiece in the former dining room, dated 1912, may be designed by Schwabe and crafted by Falcon. On completion, the house was rented and occupied by another Harper sister, Josephine, and her husband, Dr F R Elliston Wright, a local General Practitioner, surgical specialist and amateur naturalist who would occasionally use his horse kept in the stable for house calls with patients. He was a published expert on Devon flora and fauna. The house and stable are shown on postwar Ordnance Survey maps.

Alterations to the house in the late C20/ early C21 include the conversion of the scullery and coal storage areas to other uses, a new access from the drawing room into a study and the rearrangement of the upstairs bathroom. The hayloft, or ‘tallet’, to the stable was converted to a bedroom in the C21 and the main doors replaced with a steel shutter. There have been modifications to the formal garden features including the pond and garden walling. The paddock was retained by the previous owner when the ownership of Sharlands House last changed hands in the 1990s.

Details

A house with front garden wall and stables of 1912 by G A E Schwabe for T A Falcon with late C20 and early C21 alterations.

MATERIALS: dressed local stone walls, and some pebbledash elevations with cement dressings. The roofs are covered in slate. Cast-iron rainwater goods have lion emblems. To the interior, timber joinery across the building includes sashes to the window openings, panelling and panelled doors with brass furniture.

PLAN: of two storeys, in part with attic, the house is rectangular on plan with two projecting single-storey wings either side of the centre to the road front (east). The central hallway has stairs to the rear and principal rooms to each side.

EXTERIOR: in a playful and free Georgian style, informed by Arts and Crafts principles of design, with oversailing eaves to a pyramidal roof and modest detailing to pebbledash and dressed stone elevations. The central section of the façade, finished in stone, is brought forward from the pebbledash bays to each side and framed by stone stacks with slender cement coping and pebbledash to the chimney pots. The central double-leaf door has a fanlight within a round arch with dressed voussoirs. There is a four-over-four sash under a stone head to each side. Above is an eight-over-eight sash and a cast-iron downpipe to the right. Single-storey stone wings with flat roofs frame the entrance and are attached to a stone garden wall and gate. There are stone steps to the front door. The right wing has a small opening to the road, formerly a coal hole. The rear of the left wing is enclosed in a garden room/study with two casements and an attached lean-to glasshouse.

The symmetrical garden front (south) has paired French doors with blank fanlights in cement architraves below eight-over-eight sashes with margin lights, and a central cast-iron downpipe. The west elevation has an eclectic fenestration with stair window to left of centre and a variety of openings to each side, all sashes. To the right of the elevation is a projecting chimneystack that breaks through the eaves. The north elevation (facing the stable) has an eight-over-eight sash with margin lights to the left, and an eight-over-eight sash above. To the right, the door and slender sashes to each side are sympathetic C21 replacement sashes framed by a cement render with a sealed opening above. To the far left are a door and window to the single-storey service wing attached to the front of the house.

INTERIOR: the front door opens into a vestibule with a glazed door to the marble-tiled hallway. There is decorative panelling to the frieze and ceiling. The hall has a staircase to the rear and doors to the drawing room, dining room, kitchen and cloakroom. The principal rooms have plaster cornices and picture rails, and the drawing room has panelled double-leaf sliding doors to the former dining room with a painted panel of geometric design fixed to each side. On the east wall is a marble chimneypiece with ornate cast-iron fireplace, a panelled timber surround and tiled hearth. To its right is an inserted doorway to the study. The dining room has a copper and tin chimneypiece, engraved with the date, 1912, and a dragonfly motif in an Art Nouveau style, with a beaten copper and lead lip to the tiled hearth and a timber mantelpiece and surround. The kitchen has been opened out to a dining area in the former scullery and there is an inglenook opening at its east end. The pine staircase balustrade has square stick balusters and flattened urn finals to square newels. The bedrooms have original joinery including cornice picture rails. Fireplaces have been removed or sealed. The attic space is partly boarded and floored.

SUBSIDIARY FEATURES: the detached stable on the north side of the house is constructed of rubblestone with brick quoins and is single storey plus attic (formerly the loft or tallet). The pitched roof is covered in slate and a swan windvane is fixed to the west gable, above a modern external timber stair to an attic door. The elevation facing the house has a modern door and shutter opening to the left. To the centre is a window and a dormer above with an oversailing roof in the manner of a hoist. To the far right is a stable door under a brick head. The interior retains the original brick floors, stall and manger.

Sources

Books and journals
Chugg, Brian, Dr Elliston Wright of Braunton Devon (1998), 3

Websites
A Biographical Dictionary of the Architects of Greater Manchester 1800-1940: Godfrey (Bertie) Schwabe, accessed 13/02/2025 from https://manchestervictorianarchitects.org.uk/buildings/sharlands-house-sharlands-lane-braunton-devon
Biographical Dictionary of British and Irish Architects 1800-1950: Schwabe, Godfrey Albert Edward 1877 - 1960, accessed 17/02/2025 from https://architecture.arthistoryresearch.net/architects/schwabe-godfrey-albert-edward

End of official list entry