Description

BOVEY TRACEY NEWTON ROAD (east side) SX 87 NW Bovey Tracey 5/16 - Indio House

- II

Large house. Built 1850 for Charles Aldenburg Bentinck. Architect: David Mackintosh. Squared rubble, probably Devonian limestone, with squared granite quoins; doorways and windows dressed with oolitic limestone, probably Bath stone. Slated roofs with blue glazed ridge-tiles. Tall, crenellated chimneystacks of similar materials, placed to give romantic effect. Double-depth plan with asymmetrically placed projections. Attached to north-west end is a lower building, somewhat resembling a chapel, but described in the architect's plan as a laundry; about 3 metres to the north-west of this is a small detached building in a similar style, said to have been used as a butchery. 2 storeys with garret. The exterior, which is virtually unaltered, is designed in an austere Tudor style. Main south- west front is 5 windows wide; the windows, with minor exceptions, are mullioned and transomed with flat heads and no hood-moulds. In the centre bay is a 2-storey gabled entrance-porch. Both inner and outer doorways have 2-centred arches and deep Perpendicular mouldings, the outer arch having quatrefoils in the spandrels and a hood-mould. Above the outer arch is a stone plaque carved with the date 1850, the initials CAB, an heraldic emblem and the motto CRAIGNEZ HONTE. In the second storey of the porch is a 3-light mullioned-and-transomed window having above it a square sunk panel carved with a cross in low relief. At each end of the front is a gabled projection 1 window wide, that to the right given considerably greater emphasis. To right of the porch in second storey is a tall staircase window of 4 mullioned-and- transomed lights. All 3 gables have moulded copings, kneelers and carved apexes. The windows have small square panes, except for the right-hand ground storey window, in which the lower lights have 3 large panes each. The second-storey window to the left of the porch has small square panes with margins of quarter-panes. The laundry building has on its south-west gable a bell-turret and bell. Interiors remarkably well-preserved, at least on the south-eastern side of the house. Remainder not inspected, but north-west front room on ground storey said to have moulded plaster ceiling with date 1850. David Mackintosh, who died in 1859 aged 42, was an Exeter architect apparently specialising mainly in church building and restoration, although in 1859 he was commissioned to build a mansion at Sandridge Park, Wiltshire. There was an earlier house at Indio, built for John Southcote who obtained a perpetual lease of the property from St. John's Hospital, Bridgwater, in 1531. No trace of this house appears to remain, except possibly for some columns in the garden (q.v.). Sources: original drawings dated March 1850 in possession of Mr Burrell of Indio Design Partnership, Ashburton. F. J. Snell, Devonshire, 1908, p.163. J. Youings in Devon and Cornwall Record Society new series, vol.1, 1955, p. 49. G. P. Jones, Notes on Bovey Tracey, 1826 (typescript in Westcountry Studies Library, Exeter); p.8. L. Tregoning, Bovey Tracey, 1983, p.10 Exeter Flying Post, 20.1 and 18.8.1859 with other references (see index in Westcountry Studies Library, Exeter).

Listing NGR: SX8167077744

External Links

• Wikidata Q26619175

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