Open Day at Poltimore House, near Exeter

Poltimore House is a historic manor house situated about five miles north-east of Exeter on the edge of Poltimore village. It was built by the Bampfylde family* in the 1550s and remodelled in the mid-18th century with further additions made in the early 1900s. It was here that the Treaty of Exeter was negotiated in 1646 following the Royalist surrender of the city during the English Civil War. In the 20th century it was a school and a hospital, and it is now a derelict ruin.

It was left to rot from 1974 and almost burned to the ground following an arson attack in 1987. As rain dripped through the roof, thieves stole the magnificent ornamental fireplaces, the doorcases, the floorboards, the mahogany doors and the 1st Baron Poltimore's grand staircase. In 2000 the property was taken over by the Poltimore House Trust and with the support of East Devon District Council and English Heritage the group aims to restore the house to a usable condition at a cost of over £5.5 million. Poltimore House was a finalist in the BBC's 'Restoration' series in 2003 and even in its present condition it remains a Grade II* listed building. It is a miracle that the house still survives and shocking that it was ever allowed to fall into such an extreme state of disrepair.

I first visited it ten years ago and recently went again when the house was opened to the public as part of the national Heritage Open Day event. The entire building is now encased in scaffolding and it is hoped that work will soon begin on repairing the roof, a mammoth operation. The following photographs were all taken on 11 September 2011.

* The Bampfyldes also built Bampfylde House in Exeter, a large, late-16th century townhouse that was destroyed by bombing in 1942.

Exterior of Poltimore House





The Entrance Hall

The Salon from c1740

The Red Drawing Room and Stairs in Tower

The Tudor Courtyard and Octagonal Stair Tower



 
The Garden and Grounds





Poltimore House c1930

Lost Jacobean Plasterwork Ceilings II

The example left was a plasterwork ceiling found in one of the bed chambers at Bampfylde House and covered an area approximately 20ft by 10ft. This ceiling either dated from the first few of decades of the 17th century or, more likely, from the time of the building's construction in the 1590s. In some respects it was similar to the ceiling in the Tudor Room of St Nicholas's Priory. Quatrefoils, a standard motif in both Gothic and Renaissance design are used once again, outlined by thin ribs, but now a square has been added to the centre of each quatrefoil leading to a greater complexity in the overall design.

Plain plasterwork beams divided the ceiling into four panels. In the two larger panels the quartefoils merge, with sprays of flowers festooning the corners of the each of the central squares. The two smaller panels both held a slightly different design, a single quatrefoil and square, but with a greater abundance of floral motifs.

A similar ceiling existed in the dining room, but both that one and the ceiling in the bed chamber were completely destroyed during the air-raid of 01 May 1942.

An even greater loss at Bampfylde House was the elaborate Jacobean plasterwork ceiling in the parlour, also known as the Oak Room. It measured approximately 20ft by 15ft and was certainly one of the greatest examples of its type that had ever been constructed in Exeter below right. It dated to the 1620s or 1630s when the skill of the Jacobean plasterer was at its height and when the most elaborate designs were being executed all across England. Now the emphasis was on the geometric complexity of the pattern and the plainer ribs used in the above-mentioned ceilings had been replaced with what was known as strapwork, heavily decorated plaster ribs that criss-crossed the ceilings in an exuberant display of craftsmanship.

Ceilings such as this were both extremely expensive and time-consuming and were a sign of high status. The techniques would differ from ceiling to ceiling but the general idea was to plaster the ceiling as normal over a series of oak lathes. Once done the plasterer could begin to draw the outline of the design directly onto the flat ceiling before building up the strapwork itself, using moulds to create the cornices and to give each rib a finished appearance. Once the strapwork was complete the application of various motifs could take place. These would all have been prepared from moulds and then applied individually onto the strapwork by hand. In the Oak Room at Bampfylde House most of the strapwork was enriched with a running foliage design but also included the sprays of foliage familiar from other ceilings in Exeter, growing out of the geometric shapes like two-dimensional bunches of flowers. The entire ceiling was destroyed in 1942.

The next ceiling illustrated by Bankart is a slight mystery. It was part of the public house known as the 'Courtenay Arms' which, at least in 1909, was situated near to the church on the eastern side of Mary Arches Street but at the moment I know little about the building or its origins. This is perhaps the most immediately attractive of all of the Exeter ceilings illustrated by Bankart left. The strapwork was slightly less ornate than that seen in the Oak Room at Bampfylde House but all the spaces within the geometric design were flooded with masses of curling flowers and foliage.

And in amongst the thicket of leaves were beautifully naive depictions of birds and animals: a horse; a very cheerful lion with a long, straggling mane; two falcons and a deer; three intertwined fish; dogs with short ears; dogs with long ears; a rabbit; a snake and a very strange creature that looks like a griffin or a dog with wings.

It was an incredible piece of work. It measured approximately 18ft by 15ft and was divided into two panels by a beam, each panel being a rough mirror image of its neighbour. I have no idea what happened to it. The building that housed the ceiling was gone well before World War Two and it's almost certain that the ceiling was destroyed within a few years of its being recorded by Bankart. As far as I'm aware Bankart's illustration is the only depiction of this wonderful ceiling that exists.

The next example is from No. 79 Fore Street, one of the two 17th-century timber-frame houses that together were known as 'The Chevalier Inn' and which stood near the junction of South Street with Fore Street. Like the Oak Room ceiling in Bampfylde House, this ceiling at No. 79 Fore Street featured enriched strapwork but within a slightly less complex geometric design. The date of its installation was somewhere around 1630, soon after the house had been constructed.

The main feature of the design right were three over-lapping quatrefoils but, compared with earlier examples, these quatrefoils were hardily recognisable as such. The curves had been replaced with sharp corners, but the abundance of foliage springing from both the corners of the quatrefoils and the inset squares are very familiar. As at Bampfylde House, the strapwork itself was decorated with a profusion of running leaves that snaked across every part of the corniced ribs. It measured approximately 10ft by 20ft.

The Chevalier Inn had a number of other decorated ceilings of a similar date but with simpler narrow ribs instead of the ornate strapwork highlighted by Bankart. Both of the houses that comprised the inn were totally destroyed in the bombing of 04 May 1942 and all the ceilings were lost forever.

Part three of this post can be found here.

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St Stephen's Church, High Street

This church has diced with death so many times that it's remarkable that it even still exists. Much time and effort has gone into renovating it over the last few years by an umbrella group of local charities working under the name of the St Stephen's Project, and the building itself has Grade II* listed status.

It has admittedly been considerably altered and rebuilt since the Middle Ages and it is now perhaps underwhelming but its survival is a testament to determination in the face of often powerful opposition.

Unfortunately the church itself is now surrounded by insipid post-war rebuilding and redevelopment and totally lacks any visual context within a wider historical cityscape. Anyway, of Exeter's many medieval parish churches which once existed inside the walled city only six remain, and this is one of them.

The church dates back to before the Conquest and is mentioned in Domesday in 1086 at which point it was in the possession of William Warelwast, Bishop of Exeter and a nephew of William the Conqueror. Along with the gift of St Stephen's went several houses with high rents which together became known as St Stephen's Fee, a nice little earner for the incumbent bishop and one which Warelwast, at least, believed entitled him to a seat in Parliament. The Saxon church was rebuilt soon after the Conquest, perhaps as early as the 1080s at the same time as the new Norman cathedral was being constructed, and for centuries it was believed that nothing survived of the Norman St Stephen's.

The image above is a 1905 map of the city overlaid onto a modern aerial view of the same area. It shows the properties within the parish boundary of St Stephen's. The parish boundary extended across the High Street and included part of Gandy Street in the north and part of St Martin's Lane in the west. It also shows the extent of demolition in the area since 1905. All the areas highlighted in red have been demolished since 1905, a combination of bomb damage in 1942 and post-war redevelopment. The only properties within the parish that pre-date 1905, including the church itself, are highlighted in purple.

The church was possibly rebuilt again in the 15th century, along with many of Exeter's other parish churches, but after the execution of Charles I and the period of the Interregnum the number of parishes in the city was reduced to just four and St Stephen's, like many others, was auctioned off to the highest bidder. The church, "with cellar below", was sold for £250 to Toby Allen who used the cellar as a stable. The church fell into a severe state of ruin, the tower being partially demolished but, after the Restoration of Charles II in 1660, the church was reclaimed by the parish and work began on its reconstruction. Jenkins relates the contents of a Will signed by a George Potter Esq. on 04 March 1662 in which Potter bequeaths the then enormous sum of £500 "towards the new building of St Stephen's". Work appears to have been completed by 1664 and that is from when most of the present exterior dates.

The present building has an embattled tower and parapet typical of many of Exeter's parish churches. The tower has an exterior staircase surmounted by a little spire with a weathervane on top. The soft Heavitree breccia that was once used throughout the city has proved to be a problem in the preservation of nearly all the buildings which were constructed from it. At the medieval church of St Mary Arches the solution was to coat the entire facade with concrete.

At St Stephen's, as has been done at nearby St Martin's, the tower has instead been coated with a substance that protects the existing stonework. It's a pity that the salmon-pink colouring is so vivid. A similar problem affects the new render on the parapet which runs along the top of the north wall.

Jenkins visited the church in the early 19th century and described it as a "handsome Gothic building, consisting of a nave, one aisle, a chancel and a long gallery: it is light, roomy, well-seated and kept in good repair". He continues, "the chancel is erected on an arch, which crosses the adjoining lane, called St Stephen's Bow". At some point in its medieval past the church clearly needed to expand but was restricted by the presence of surrounding buildings. Therefore the easiest way to do so was by constructing out above the top of the "adjoining lane", little more than an alleyway known in the 19th century as Stephen Street. Stephen Street ran down the side of the church connecting the High Street with Catherine Street. The arch allowed the continued use of the narrow street while providing St Stephen's with extra floor space. Originally this small room was a side chapel dedicated to St John the Evangelist and was only used as a chancel after the Reformation. This feature, medieval in origin but much-restored after 1942, is still present today above left. An almost identical arch existed at St John's church in Fore Street. Known as St John's Bow it was demolished in 1863 (the rest of St John's followed suit in 1937).

In 1826 St Stephen's underwent a number of radical modifications, and it was during these works that a remarkable discovery was made. As workmen excavated near the eastern end they happened upon the crypt of the Norman church. Two round limestone columns were discovered in situ both just over five feet high, both with decorated capitals as well as some arches from a vaulted ceiling. The columns are Norman and of great historical importance as their survival makes them some of the oldest standing masonry in Exeter. Clearly the crypt was part of the "cellar" mentioned when the church was auctioned off in 1658 and which was then covered over again during the post-Restoration reconstruction. The image above right © Devon County Council shows a watercolour sketch that was done at the time of the crypt's rediscovery in 1826.

The crypt was resealed in the 1820s without further investigation. According to the St Stephen Project website, the crypt has been entered twice since then, once in 1932 and again in 1972. In 1932 it was reported that the crypt was full of coffins but in 1972 only one seems to have been left, dating from the 1600s. The crypt was resealed once again in 1972 but in August 2011 the crypt was once more partially excavated. Archaeologists working at the church uncovered the capitals of the two columns buried in back-filled rubble. There are only two known Saxon crypts in the whole of Devon. One is at Sidbury and the other is under the church of St Stephen on Exeter's High Street. There would've been approximately 20 such columns supporting the crypt's vaulted roof. It's not known what else might survive. Unfortunately fears that a full excavation might jeopardise the structure of the church has resulted in the early-12th century columns being reburied and there are no plans to reveal them again.

Unfortunately the modifications of the 1820s also removed almost all traces of any surviving antiquity still remaining above ground in the interior. Slender neo-Gothic pillars left were added along with some skylights and an octagonal font. The "long gallery" mentioned by Jenkins was removed in 1895. In 1894 the church was threatened with total demolition. A letter from Mr J Newnham, an architect, which appeared in Trewman's 'Exeter Flying Post' on 09 June that year was justifiably angry: "[St Stephen's] destruction would not only be vandalism but sacrilege. It is a historic building. It is a picturesque feature in the High Street. The spot is hallowed ground, and has been occupied by a church for at least 700 years. We have no right to destroy it". The letter continues: "That it is in a delapidated condition is no excuse for its wanton destruction" (although this has been the perennial excuse often used by the city council).

And then, warming to his theme, Newnham launches into an attack on demolition in Exeter generally: "The havoc wrought among the ancient buildings of Exeter during the last century or so has been appalling. We have lost our city and close gates. The treasury has gone, so has the old Grammar school [St John's Hospital School]. The churches of St George and St Kerrian have been destroyed. St John's Bow has ceased to exist. Much of the Castle and College of the Vicars Choral has been swept away...yet Exonians love to call historic Exeter 'that ancient and loyal city!' We have lost so much that we cannot afford to lose any more." If Newnham thought that the 19th century had been destructive then I can only imagine what he would've made of the impact of the 20th century on Exeter's historical cityscape. Anyway, the church was reprieved.

Somehow the church managed to escape complete destruction during the devastating air raid of 04 May 1942. The building itself was moderately damaged. A fire in the tower caused the three bells to fall to the floor, the roof was damaged, the stain-glass windows were all blown out and St Stephen's Bow was completely gutted. But it escaped comparatively lightly as the New Inn, which stood to the immediate left of the church was totally destroyed as was part of Colson's department store to the right. The photograph above right © Express & Echo shows firefighters amongst the smouldering ruins of the High Street with St Stephen's highlighted in red. One of the canted bay windows of No. 229 is just visible to the far left.

St Stephen's was one of the tiny handful of Exeter's historic buildings repaired after 1942. 30 years later, with congregations diminishing, all the Victorian fittings were removed to allow for a more flexible use of the space. Amongst the surviving items of historical interest are some of the wall memorials. There's a memorial to the above-mentioned George Potter who died on 26 November 1662 and who was buried in the church his money had helped to reconstruct. Of particular interest is another wall monument left from the late-17th century commemorating James Rodd of Bedford House. James Rodd was married to the daughter of John Bampfylde of Poltimore House, also the owner of Bampfylde House in Exeter, and therefore provides a link between what were two of the finest Tudor houses the city ever had: Bedford House and Bampfylde House.

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Bampfylde House: An Elizabethan Mansion in the Centre of Exeter

Before 1942, on the corner of Bampfylde Street, a very narrow lane leading to the High Street, stood the late-16th century Bampfylde House above. Bampfylde Street was once known as Raden Lane and was barely 14ft across. The house itself stood on the corner of Bampfylde Street with Catherine Street. At the time of its destruction it was, by far, the most important late-16th century domestic building in the city, renowned for the exceptional quality of its Jacobean interiors. Bedford House, the nearby residence of the 1st Earl of Bedford, John Russell, was significantly larger but was demolished in 1770s.

Construction of Bampfylde House began in 1590 for a wealthy Devon landowner called Richard Bampfylde, although archaeological excavations in the late 1940s confirmed that the house was built on the site of an earlier medieval building, probably the property that was mentioned in a will dating to 1394. The house took the form of a large accommodation block attached to which were two projecting wings forming a small central courtyard with a porch built into the right-angle at one side, all constructed from the local red stone known as Heavitree breccia, and with a slate roof on top. After the death of Richard Bampfylde in 1594 the house became the property of his son, Sir Amyas Bampfylde, who set about enriching it with the most ornate and elaborate interiors typical of the late-Elizabethan period.

Although the house no longer exists, it was visited in the late-19th century by Robert Dymond, a local historian and Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries. An article on the property appeared in the periodical 'The Archaeological Journal' in 1874. Much of the following information is derived from Dymond's account. Dymond noted that walls which immediately fronted onto Bampfylde Street contained no windows on the ground floor, the light being received instead through "three large mullioned windows" in the courtyard. The reason for this was one of security: "When the entrance to the court[yard] was closed, the inmates were secure from night marauders and civil broils. They might even hold out for a time after the City gates had yielded to the sudden incursion of an enemy." The front wall must've been at one time significantly higher than it appeared in the 19th century.

Dymond then goes on to relate an incident that took place on 19 July 1769 when the the 4th Duke of Bedford, owner of Bedford House, turned up at the Guildhall to be given the freedom of the city. The Duke, one of the most powerful political figures in 18th century England, had apparently made the mistake of agreeing with a clause in the Treaty of Paris which had ended the Seven Years War.

The disputed clause allowed for the importation of French fabrics at the probable expense of locally-produced materials. Needless to say, the local population was enraged as Exeter's economy was heavily dependent on the sale of wool and cloth. Upon leaving the Guildhall the Duke was met with the "hisses and threats of a furious mob" and, accompanied by the mayor and Sir Richard Bampfylde, he hurriedly seeked refuge in Bampfylde House. The Duke eventually fled Exeter under the cover of darkness and it was soon after this event that Bedford House was demolished by the Duke for the construction of Bedford Circus. Back to the house itself, and in one corner of the courtyard was a very large lead water cistern above left. It was, writes Dymond, "cast in lead of great thickness...the front side bears the letters Sr C.W.B. [Sir Coplestone Warwick Bampfylde] and the date 1724 surmounted by a representation of a fat stag pursued by three hounds and a huntsman on foot, bearing a spear."

The image below right is a detail from Caleb Hedgeland's superb wooden model of the city which he completed in 1824. It shows Bampfylde House, highlighted in red. The High Street is in the foreground with Bampfylde Street leading off towards the house itself.

Dymond speculated that the entrance porch set into the corner of the quadrangle was a slightly later addition "for it overlaps and partially obscures one of the upper mullioned windows". The posts were of oak and "enriched with lion's heads, of Elizabethan character, carved in relief, and connected by a carved frieze on the two external sides." The small chamber above the porch was an oak-panelled muniment room, used for keeping paperwork, deeds and documents. Entrance into the house was through the porch, which lead directly into the Hall, "a compartment of comparatively ample proportions".

The Hall was lit by a six-light mullioned window (visible in the photograph above left to the right of the lead water cistern). Inset into the panes of the window were various pieces of glass with armorial bearings, relating to the Bampfylde family, and which dated back to the 15th century, probably transferred from elsewhere. The Hall formerly possessed a magnificent overmantel depicting Charles I on horseback with figures of Peace and Plenty on either side and grotesque statues of a Cavalier and Puritan soldier. This was added to the house at the time of the Restoration of Charles II in 1660. It was still in situ when Jenkins visited the property at the start of the 19th century, but between then and the time of Dymond's article the overmantel was moved to the Bampfylde country estate at Poltimore on the outskirts of Exeter before being moved once again to a house in North Molton.

Beneath the Hall was a cellar, accessed via a flight of stone steps from the courtyard outside (the grating that covered the entrance into the cellar is visible in the photograph showing the lead cistern). The cellar had a groin vault made of red brick supported on a pier nearly 2ft square. Dymond believed that the cellar was "original work" but brick wasn't freely available in Exeter as a building material until the mid-17th century, although there are scattered documentary references to it in the cty as early as 1578.

In one corner of the Hall was the main staircase, described by Dymond as "broad and easy". Although the treads had been replaced, the oak newel post and the panelling on the walls were both of Elizabethan origin. For the servants a smaller, secondary staircase, "narrower and winding", had been installed at the rear of the property, its original octagonal newel post still remaining.

Upon arriving at the landing on the first floor a doorway led into what was not only the finest room in the house but one of the finest rooms of its type in England: the so-called Oak Room, described by Dymond as "a truly noble apartment". It was the appearance of this room in particular that made Bampfylde House a treasure trove of Elizabethan and Jacobean craftsmanship.

The walls of the Oak Room above were covered with oak panelling "extending from the floor to within a foot of the ceiling". The panelling was divided into sections with shallow fluted Ionic pilasters. The pilasters were crowned with superb grotesque masks "in bold relief and of most spirited design." Running between the masks were a series of carved panels depicting stylised flowers and geometric shapes, "consistent with each other in character, but freely varying in design". Between the top of the panelling and the ceiling was a plaster frieze depicting human figures, the hands merging into intertwining patterns of foliage.

The plaster overmantel was exceptionally ornate right. Placed in the centre was a large depiction of the Bampfylde coat of arms, impaled eight times with various other families and surmounted by a knight's visored helmet which was in turn surmounted by a lion's head in profile. On either side stubby-nosed lions peered out, and underneath the lions were swags of fruit. The fire surround was carved from limestone with yet more faces and lions set into the stonework amidst complicated geometric shapes.

The incredibly rich decoration of the walls continued in the extremely complex early-17th century plasterwork ceiling, "a fine example of the designer's taste and the modeller's skill", the strapwork design embellished with more foliage. The Oak Room was lit by three mullioned windows, one of which, three bays wide, overlooked Bampfylde Street. The other two, one either side of the overmantel, looked down into Catherine Street. In 1942, the Oak Room was certainly the finest room of its type left in Exeter, the similar rooms in No. 229 High Street having been broken up and sold or destroyed in the 1930s. More about the various plasterwork ceilings in Bampfylde House can be found here.

The other rooms in Bampfylde House were similar, if perhaps not quite so fine, and dated, like the Oak Room, from the end of the 16th century to the 1630s. There were two other rooms on the first floor, apart from the Oak Room. Both were partially panelled in oak and had decorative plasterwork ceilings, one of which also had a three-bay window that looked out over Bampfylde Street. The second floor contained several bed chambers, at least one of which had a simple plasterwork design in the ceiling as well as a large fireplace. Also on the ground floor was a large kitchen above which had a huge fireplace with a massive timber-framed partition wall made of oak. There were also a series of smaller service rooms at the rear of the property that were accessed through a small gateway to the right of the main entrance.

At least in the 19th century there was still a courtyard at the rear overlooked by a gabled window set into the roof. By the time Dymond visited, the garden which once stretched as far as the City Wall was covered with stabling. When Sidney Heath wrote his guidebook to Exeter in the early-20th century it seems as though this rear courtyard had been fiddled with. Speaking generally about the city, he wrote that "there has been an appalling amount of destruction, some of it apparently of an unnecessary kind, [such] as the recent dismantling of the beautiful old courtyard in the rear of Bampfylde House". The map left shows Bampfylde House on a street plan of 1905 combined with an aerial view of the same area today. The site is now part of the puerile new multi-million pound Princesshay shopping development.

In 1934 the City Council purchased the property from Arthur Guest, who had spent much time and money on restoring the interiors of the the house. An article on the acquisition appeared in The Times stating that Bampfylde House was "considered to be the finest sixteenth-century town house still in existence west of Salisbury" with the exception of the Red House at Bristol. The Council paid £5000 for Bampfylde House and turned the entire building into a museum, stuffing it with period tables, chairs, coffers, beds, wall hangings and pictures, and it opened to the public for the first time on 07 November 1934. It was therefore a massive loss to the city's architectural heritage when, just eight years later, Bampfylde House, along with all its contents and all its extraordinary interiors, was totally destroyed by incendiary bombs in the early hours of 4 May 1942.

By the following day there was nothing left except the broken remains of the walls right © Express & Echo. The photograph, frequently misidentified as Lower Market Street, actually shows the clearing of war-damaged property around Bampfylde House. The very narrow Bampfylde Street can just be made out running in front of the property from right to left. It's possible that enough of the building had survived to allow a reconstruction, but it was never going to be possible to replace the magnificent interior. Unfortunately, in the post-war rebuilding of Exeter, Bampfylde Street on which the house once stood was all but obliterated, and today there is no sign that the house ever existed. A tiny scrap of the plasterwork frieze was salvaged from the Oak Room and is currently in the Royal Albert Memorial Museum in Exeter. And that was the end of Bampfylde House.

Some semblance of old Bampfylde Street was retained during the post-war reconstruction. It consisted of a nameless, dirty passageway, twice the width of the original street, which led from the High Street into the pedestrianised precinct known as Princesshay. During the recent bland remodelling of the area this passageway was retained and renamed Bampfylde Lane below, but it is small recompense for the loss of one of the Westcountry's most significant historical buildings. People familiar with Devon might know The Walronds at Cullompton, built in 1605 for a lawyer named John Peter. Now a Grade I listed building it gives a some idea, in both size and design, of how Bampfylde House appeared prior to its destruction in 1942.

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