Beara Court including attached service wing, stable block, garage, gate piers, garden walls and steps

Summary

A little-altered Victorian gentleman’s country residence of 1873-1890, built on the site of an Elizabethan house, and partly incorporating its fabric. Designed for himself by Lucius Reichel, architect and antiquary, as a fantasy of a medieval mansion, with fixtures brought from other houses and churches alongside joinery and ironmongery in a traditional style. The ensemble is completed by an attached service wing, stable block and garage.

Reasons for Designation

Beara Court, including the attached service wing, stable block, garage, gate piers, garden walls and steps, is listed at Grade II for the following principal reasons:

Architectural interest:

* as a substantial country house well-executed in the Old English or Domestic Revival Style, designed by a gentleman architect for himself
* for the good quality of its embellishments, notably half-timbered bay windows with leaded casements, stone-mullioned windows with ‘Gothick’ glazing bars and a stone door architrave with rams head carvings;
* for its eclectic and high-quality interior fixtures, both imported and designed, including panelled doors, windows and shutters, staircases, beams, chimneypieces and overmantels;
* the impact of C20 alterations on the spirit of the original design is minor.

Historic interest:

* as a rare example of a Devonshire gentleman’s residence to survive with its companion buildings and gardens;
* as an example of the late C19 antiquarian tradition of creating a modern country seat with the appearance of antiquity by incorporating and integrating historic features alongside newly commissioned fixtures;
* for the association with Lucius Reichel and Revd. Oswald Reichel FSA, both noted restorers of historic Devon buildings;
* the house previously on the site was the residence of Sir George Stucley Bart. MP, High Sheriff of Devon in the C19.

Group value:

* the interest of the house is enriched by its estate buildings: the attached service wing with stable block and early C20 motor garage, as well as the gated entrance and garden walling, steps and other formal garden features from which there are extensive views across the countryside to the north.

History

A building was referred to at Beara in a document of 1330 when ‘Nicolas ate Beare’ was the occupier. However, Beara Court is largely the late C19 architectural creation of Lucius Hurlock Reichel (1842-1927), the younger brother of Revd. Oswald Reichel FSA of A La Ronde, Exmouth (Grade I). Oswald helped his brother acquire Beara Court and its 156-acre estate from Sir George Stucley Bart. in 1873 so that Lucius, a keen antiquarian and architect, could rebuild the house as his country seat. The house was reoriented to face south but some parts of the earlier structure were retained, such as the granite vaulting and stop-chamfered beams to the basement, the latter probably dating to the ownership of the Parson family in the C17.

The First Edition Ordnance Survey Map of 1880 shows the first phase of Reichel’s rebuilding in the fashionable baronial Old English style of the period with bow windows to each corner of the east end of the house. From 1884, Reichel was involved in the restoration of the local Parish Church of St Mary (Grade II*, NHLE: 1105121) and some of the fabric from the church is said to be reused in Beara Court. The Second Edition OS of 1904 shows a new arrangement at the west end of the house. A Great Hall wing had been built to the north front and the service wing was extended and attached to a stable block to the west. The Great Hall has a dated roof truss of 1889, predating the completed restoration of the parish church by Reichel in 1902-3. Many of the fittings and architectural features in the house are reused from other sites or repurposed from the earlier building on the site. Reichel aspired to be a gentleman squire and gave his profession on the 1891 census as ‘architect and farmer’. He also planted trees extensively on the estate and made some attempts at landscaping the grounds.

In 1922 the house and part of the estate was sold to the Hong Kong banker and legislator Hon. Arthur Hynes. The addition of a motorcar garage in front of the stables probably dates to this interwar period. The rest of the estate was sold following Reichel’s death in 1927. Later in the C20, alterations and improvements were made to the house and staff accommodation wing and for a time it was in use as an “Elizabethan Country Hotel”. Repairs and some alterations were made in the late C20, although the original heating and bell systems were not replaced.

Details

A country house built from 1873-1890 by Lucius H Reichel on the site of an earlier house. It has an attached service wing, stables and garage of late C19/C20 date. There are late C19 entrance gates, piers, garden walls and steps.

MATERIALS: walls of granite and slatestone with granite dressings. Coursed stone to the south front, randomly dressed on the north side. Half-timbering. Clay roof tiles. Brick chimney stacks. Cast-iron rainwater goods. Metal and timber casements with leaded panes or timber glazing bars; some to the rear are replacements.

PLAN: asymmetrical rectangle, oriented east-west with entrance off centre to the east end of the south front and wing projecting at the west end of the north side containing a great hall. Attached at an angle to the west end is a stables and garage with staff accommodation.

EXTERIOR: in the Old English style. The principal front (south) is two storey with basement and gabled attic dormers, of an irregular six bays with central chimney stack. The three east bays break forward with full height gabled stone porch projecting in the centre. This has a chamfered Gothic arch with decorated spandrels, in straight-headed stone architrave with rams horn detailing to the base and tablet above with coat of arms in relief. Brick-vaulted vestibule inside. The windows in these east bays have metal casements with hexagonal patterns of glazing. The west end has a tall chimney stack with quadruple brick shafts, abutting a large two-storey timber bay window, which has patterns of curved timber braces in the frieze between the windows and herringbone patterns in the gable. A smaller oriel window in the adjoining bay has the same patterned frieze and gable; below this is a secondary door and two reset mullioned windows. The east bay of this front has a modern lean-to conservatory. The east elevation has a gable with cut bargeboard, and a pair of two-storey bow windows with conical lead roofs. The base of each has a stone, buttress-like foundation.

The garden (north) front of the three-bay east part is of three storeys plus attic and in the centre has a large mullioned stair window above a garden door with steps. Casement windows of this part have similar patterns of glazing as on the south front and the bay in the angle with the wing for the Great Hall has half-timbered patterns. Projecting forward in the west part is the gabled wing. This has a cusped bargeboard, tall, mullioned casements to each elevation and on the north end a wide two-centred arch with steps and a ramped low stone wall in front. A brick stack breaks through the middle of the roofslope to the west of this wing. The house's west elevation is wide and gabled, partially tile hung.

INTERIOR: this has a variety of oak and elm joinery including ceiling beams, panelled doors, panelling, staircases and floorboards; some reused and some custom-made. Oak framed entrance door with iron knocker, set within a chamfered granite architrave. The entrance opens into a hall in the manner of a screens passage, leading to the open-well staircase at the rear, spanned by four substantial cranked beams with deep ovolo chamfers and cluster-moulded joists between the beams. The passage and staircase have oak wainscoting with a moulded dado rail. The staircase has an oak balustrade with ball finials to the newels and turned balusters. There is a panelled cellar door below the stair with a reused early timber door head.

Entrance hall has a plastered arcade of three chamfered Gothic arches on the west side separating it from an inner hall (south) and axial corridor to the Great Hall and service end. A Gothic arch also separates the inner hall from the corridor and the corridor from a rear inner hall on its north side. The inner hall has a ceiling of cluster moulded joists and ovolo-chamfered cross beam supported on a stone corbel at the west end, and a similar beam set above the front window. The fireplace in the west wall has a chamfered granite chimneypiece and hearth and C20 adaptations. Rear inner hall with chamfered oak ceiling.

The doorcase from the entrance hall to the drawing room at the east end is well-detailed with panelled oak door. This room has a substantial oak ceiling with stop-chamfered cross beams and joists, and a plaster frieze. The granite fireplace has an oak chimneypiece and a decoratively carved overmantel reused from C16 furniture. The two windows at the east end have fitted bench seating under oak framed ceilings and oak boxing. There are French doors to the conservatory on the south side and some finely detailed rebated oak shutters.

The oak-panelled Great Hall (or dining room) is open to the roof and has an inglenook to the west wall with a stone fireplace below a gallery with Tudor-arched arcade. The roof has five trusses set on corbels, alternately hammer-beam/ dentilled tie beams, and with tracery to the spandrels between the posts and braces, and curved wind braces to three sets of purlins above. The central trusses are engaged with the gallery arcade. To the left of the inglenook is a bar servery concealed within the panelling.

On the south front, opposite the hall, is a sitting room with a fireplace and early timber chimneypiece with overmantel. There is a stop-chamfered cross beam to the ceiling.

In the service corridor at the west end is a bell indicator panel that is connected to bell pushes in rooms across the house. North of the corridor is the kitchen and to south is a butler’s pantry/ study which has a corner fireplace, a sink under the south window and an interior timber casement window shared with the corridor through the staff accommodation and garage wing.

The first-floor landing and bedrooms are accessed from both the main staircase and a backstair and have oak joinery and chamfered ceiling beams (in some of the bedrooms the beams are C20 compositions), panelled doors, cast-iron radiators and tiled chimneypieces. There is an ovolo chamfered oak ceiling above the main staircase and landing with counterchange pine boarding in six compartments. The bedroom at the west end has a raised ceiling and exposed tie beams from the roof above. The back stair retains substantive parts of an early staircase(s) to attic level and parts are possibly in situ from the earlier house on the site.

Below the Great Hall is a basement accessed by steps from a wide oak plank door with iron studs, and there is a fireplace built within the vaulted ceiling. The basement under the east end of the house has rooms with stop-chamfered beams facing the garden, which may relate to the earlier house on the site. There is a labyrinthine set of rooms and passages with unfinished stone walls and vaulting under the south side of the house, and with signs of former window openings. There is a late-C19 chamfered and pegged doorframe to the stone steps under the main staircase.

GARAGE, STABLES AND STAFF WING: the principal garage elevation faces east, attached to the west end of the house, and has a wide opening with ashlar voussoirs forming a Tudor arch, and glazed timber garage doors. The south elevation is of slatestone with quoins and the window architraves of dressed granite. To the right, the garage has two casements with clay tile cills. To the left, the half-hipped gable end of the stable has a louvred fanlight to the right stable door and a loading door to the gable. The west flank has a tiered brick plinth and timber casements with louvred upper lights. The north elevation has three brick gabled ends, mainly in Flemish bond and to the left an infill connection to the house. There are three mid-late C20 inserted pilasters on this elevation, and the central one cuts through the casements. The openings have segmental brick heads and there are doors to left and right of centre. The right gable is half-hipped and there is a loading door to the gable. Internally, the stables have boarded stalls with cast-iron partitioning and stone setts and gutter to the floor. This is an inserted brick tack room. The staff accommodation wing has an apartment with mid-C20 fixtures and staircase and to the ground floor there are former storage rooms with matchboarded walls.

SUBSIDIARY FEATURES: there are low stone walls with ramping, coping stones, stone urns and steps, both down to the north lawn and to the north beyond the tennis court. Other ramped walls define a courtyard in front of the staff wing.

Sources

Books and journals
Cherry, B, Pevsner, N, The Buildings of England: Devon (2004), 187
Meller, H, The Country Houses of Devon (2015), 105-106

End of official list entry