MSO10669 - Lillycombe House (Building)

House. 1912, south front altered mid C20. Designed by Lady Lovelace, assisted by C F A Voysey. Roughcast over rubble, hipped West Somerset slate roofs, slight bell-cast, overhanging eaves, bargeboard to gabled bays, large square roughcast stack right, tall octagonal roughcast stack rising from eaves left. L-plan. Two storeys, asymmetrical 4-bay south front, cambered lintels to many paned casements, gabled projecting bays first and third left flanking hipped roof dormer, 2-light casement to right, ground floor casements flanking single storey hipped roof garden room, 1:4:1 lights set on retaining wall of terrace, 2 casements to right. Pevsner describes a "handsome south verandah on stone pillars" as "unmistakably" the work of Voysey so it may be assumed that the sun room has been completed since 1958. Entrance on north front via gabled wing, unusual in that the gable end wall and returns are higher than the roof level behind but slated for about one metre to conceal this design fault. Interior: disappointing, apart from stick stair rising in entrance hall and one or two Voysey designed ventilation grills the house lacks contemporary fittings. Forms part of good group with buildings to east. It is assumed from the awkwardness of the entrance facade gable that Voysey was called in quite late to assist Lady Lovelace with her designs. (Brandon Jones et al, CFA Voysey, 1978; Pevsner, Buildings of England, South and West Somerset, 1958). [1] English Heritage Listed Building Number: 265449. First Listed on 02/01/1986. [2] L-plan. Stone, Render, roughcast and pebbledash walls. Hipped roof [3] The house does not appear on the 1st or 2nd Edition Ordnance Survey maps. [4,5] The site was visited in January 1997. The house was said to look 20th Century and was noted to have Voysey associations. It was noted to be related to a farmstead composed of 20th Century buildings, at that time surrounded by rhodedendron ponticum. [6] The house and listed retaining wall were visited in December 2013 as part of the rapid condition survey of Exmoor's Listed Buildings 2012-13. The house received a BAR score of 6 and the wall a score of 5A. [7] The house is labelled "Lillycombe House" on 2018 MasterMap data. [8] The building was assessed as part of the 2018-19 rapid condition survey of Exmoor’s Listed Buildings, receiving a BAR score of 6. [9]