Drive Cottage and former motor garage

Summary

Perched on an embankment overlooking the driveway, this 1930s estate workers cottage has a charming frontage, with a front gable that sweeps down around the front door. It is finished with high quality natural materials, including stone chimney stacks and stone-slate roofs, and was designed by the same architect as the main house, Gullet Farmhouse, making it a generous provision by the MacDonalds, who revitalised this Devon farming estate. The attached garage to the rear, once equipped with petrol pumps, would have been a hub of activity on the estate, suggesting that the house was home to the MacDonalds’ chauffeur, mechanic, or possibly both.

Reasons for Designation

Drive Cottage and former motor garage, Gullet Farm, South Pool, Devon, is listed at Grade II for the following principal reasons:

Architectural interest:

* as a well-detailed design by noted architect Herbert Read, in the Arts and Crafts style, and one of Read’s most accomplished designs across the Gullet Farm estate;
* for its construction and finishing in high quality materials roughcast rendered walls, stone tiled roofs and substantial stone stacks;
* for the modest but good quality interior fixtures to the house and the sympathetic adjustments of the mid-C20;
* the motor garage retains its original character as the centre of the estate’s motorised operations during its heyday, despite the loss of petrol pumps and plant equipment.

Historic interest:

* as the operational nucleus of the estate, providing accommodation for key staff and facilities essential to running this inter-war farming enterprise, representing an important element of the MacDonalds’ estate;
* as part of the country estate of Ian MacDonald, son of the architect Robert Falconer MacDonald, and grandson of George MacDonald, the notable C19 poet and author.

Group value:

* for its strong functional, historic and design associations with the other Grade II listed buildings on the estate designed by Herbert Read, including Gullet Farmhouse, the Home Barn buildings, the boathouse and the dairy.

History

The site of Gullet Farmhouse is shown on the 1840 tithe map for South Pool Parish as a small cluster of buildings by the foreshore on Southpool Creek, with additional farm structures scattered around the surrounding landscape. In 1925, Ian and Helen MacDonald bought the 155-acre peninsula including the farm, farmhouse and associated buildings. MacDonald commissioned Herbert Read of his late father’s practice, Read and MacDonald of London, to renovate the farmhouse, but following a fire in 1928, the house was rebuilt to new plans by Herbert Read. New buildings were introduced as part of an upgraded interwar dairy farm estate, which was in place by the outbreak of the Second World War, in which both of Ian and Helen MacDonald served.

Drive Cottage the first of a series of estate cottages constructed from around 1930, located beside Poolpark Barn and overlooking a new driveway cut along the hillside from the South Pool Road to Gullet Farmhouse. The cottage was designed with a large garage immediately to the rear to service estate vehicles, and had an engine house, battery room and a service yard with petrol pumps, which have since been removed. The house was built with a downstairs bathroom, a relatively modern feature at the time that was moved upstairs in the modernisation of the building in the late 1960s. The modernisation also included the sealing of some fireplaces, the installation of central heating and alterations to the attached outbuildings.

Details

An estate cottage, garage and storerooms of 1929/30 by Read and MacDonald for Ian and Helen MacDonald, with alterations of 1969 by Michelmore Loveys and Sons.

MATERIALS: of brick cavity wall construction and roughcast-rendered walls under Cotswold slate roofs, with substantial stone stacks. The garage and storerooms are built of brick with slate roofs.

PLAN: the cottage was built facing north and is rectangular on plan with an entrance bay set forward beneath a deep gable. It is of two storeys. Attached to the side are outhouses, and to the rear is a single-storey garage and storerooms. The garage is rectangular on plan under a pitched roof, while two storerooms, formerly an engine house and battery room, project to the south as a pair of gabled wings.

EXTERIOR: in the Arts and Crafts style with grey Cotswold slate roofs with swept eaves that contrast with white rendered walls and prominent stone chimney stacks. To the left of the façade, the main entrance and a casement are set within a wide gable under a deep gambrel roof. The right bay of the façade is set back, below a dormer and an end stack. At the east end of the façade, a single-storey outbuilding (originally a fuel store/ privy) has two plank doors facing south below a pitched tile roof and an archway to the back door of the house. The side elevations have small casements flanking projecting chimney breasts.

The attached large garage is built against the rear wall of the house. It has full width retracting plank doors to the west elevation, a window above, and further windows with concrete lintels to the north and east elevations. To the south are two projecting storerooms with doors at their south ends and double leaf plank doors to the west elevation. The concrete yard in front of the garage retains iron covers from the former fuel pumps.

INTERIOR: there is timber joinery throughout the interior of the cottage including a staircase and panelled doors and architraves with simple mouldings. To the living room is a brick fireplace with a timber mantelpiece and wainscoting with a moulded dado rail. The upstairs fireplaces have been sealed. The garage interior is a single open space with an exposed roof structure comprising bolted steel trusses supporting lateral common rafters and angled boarding. The floor is laid with concrete.

Sources

Other
Papers of Ian MacDonald Esquire: Architect plans and sketches of 1930-35 by Read and MacDonald (Herbert Read).

End of official list entry