EXLEIGH HOUSE

Overview

Location

Details

TIVERTON

SS9512 LEAT STREET, Tiverton 848-1/6/217 Exeleigh House 14/12/72

II

House, c1820, built by John Heathcoat for himself. Used as offices at one time, empty and in poor condition at time of survey. Rendered, with some local stone rubble exposed where the render has fallen off; slate roof with lead rolls; brick stacks with rendered shafts with sunk panels and some old chimneypots; cast-iron rainwater goods. PLAN: double-depth plan with central entrance into a hall, the stair rising axially to rear of the hall with top-lit stairwell. Basement kitchen and service rooms with back stair. The attic has been used for accommodation. Additional service rooms and possible stabling to rear, screened off by a stone rubble wall. EXTERIOR: 2 storeys, basement and attic. Symmetrical 5-bay front with deep boxed eaves on shaped brackets; hipped roof built round central valley with glazed dome for stairwell. Steps up to porch which has unusual cast-iron paired Ionic columns to an entablature and cornice. The sides of the porch have been infilled with late C19 or C20 2-pane sash windows and the 2-leaf half-glazed porch door with overlight and side lights is also secondary. The ground floor has 12-pane hornless timber sashes with timber hoods with mouldings for blinds which no longer exist. First-floor windows are also 12-pane sashes except the centre window which is tripartite: 12-pane in the centre and 2 over 2-pane in the outer lights. There are gabled attic dormers with slate-hung sides and pedimented gables, glazed with 2-light casements, 3 panes per light. The right return (to the River Exe) has chanelled rustication to the basement level. It is 3-bay with a central round-headed niche and a secondary doorway to the rear with steps up and a door of six fielded panels with an overlight. Windows are 12-pane hornless sashes. The left return is similar, but the basement is exposed with one louvred and one glazed window and a former doorway in the centre bay. The 4-window rear elevation is partly obscured at ground-floor level by the screen wall to the projecting rear service rooms. The first floor outer windows are 12-pane sashes, the inner windows are nine over six panes. Two small timber boxes (function unknown) are fixed to the external wall, with doorways which could be opened from the windows. The function of these is unknown. The stone rubble rear screen wall is pilastered and contains two windows and a bull's-eye opening; a doorway leading to the kitchen and a garage door knocked into it at one end. INTERIOR: the house is very complete inside, although most chimneypieces are missing. There are good plaster cornices; 6-panel doors with planted mouldings; one white marble chimneypiece; shutters. There is a particularly good staircase with a cast-iron balustrade of decorated panels. A narrow room behind the ground floor right front room has had part of its wall removed and supported on cast-iron columns. HISTORY: John Heathcoat (1783-1861) was a major influence in Tiverton in the nineteenth century. He moved to Tiverton from Nottingham in c1816, transferring his lace manufactory which had been attacked by Luddites in Nottingham. By the 1860s it was estimated that the West Exe factory in Tiverton employed more than twenty percent of the town's population. Heathcoat developed the West Exe area with housing and is a nationally important figure in the history of industrial housing and workers' welfare. He also built the first factory school (at the gates of the factory) in Devon. His grandson built Knightshayes (qv). The house is sited close to the River Exe with the parish church high above it on the opposite bank. The house is now accessible only through the Heathcoat factory complex which has been developed round it, and its garden and immediate historic environment has been altered. Exeleigh House is a good example of a Georgian villa, with some unusual features (the cast-iron columns to the porch) but is also historically important as Heathcoat's house, sited close to the factory and the West Exe development. (Southern History: Brayshay, Mark: Heathcoat's Industrial Housing in Tiverton, Devon.: 1991-: 82-104).







Listing NGR: SS9532212901

Legacy

The contents of this record have been generated from a legacy data system.

Legacy System number:

485305

Legacy System:

LBS

Sources

Books and journals
Brayshay, M, 'Southern History' in Heathcoat's Industrial Housing in Tiverton, (1991), 82-104

Legal

This building is listed under the Planning (Listed Buildings and Conservation Areas) Act 1990 as amended for its special architectural or historic interest.