Description

PAIGNTON

SX8861 TORQUAY ROAD 1947-1/4/111 (West side) 10/01/75 Former Riding School and Banqueting House at Oldway Mansion (Formerly Listed as: TORQUAY ROAD Former Riding School & Stables.....including former Conservatory Winter Garden)

GV II

Riding school and banqueting hall, riding school now used as offices; banqueting hall as workshops. 1874 by GS Bridgman for Isaac Singer (qv Oldway Mansion). MATERIALS: Flemish bond red brick on local grey limestone footings; slate roof with stacks with grouped red brick shafts with stone bands and corbelled caps with stone pots. PLAN: Riding school and exercise pavilion, round on plan, with remnant of glass-house at west side. This was designed with an open central area with stabling, harness rooms etc round the outside. It had a movable wood floor which was put in when it was used for entertaining. At the NW a banqueting hall with end towers is now used as a workshop block. EXTERIOR: 2 storeys. The riding school has moulded toothed brick cornices both to the main block and the lantern, the main block has a frieze of decorative tiles below the cornice on the main block. The lantern has a peaked slate roof with lucarnes, a weathervane and clerestorey windows. Rotunda has massive gabled porch on S side, facing Oldway Mansion, with a full-height round-headed doorway with triple keyblock with incised decoration and left and right semi-circular cheeks. Massive 2-leaf door with studs, chamfered stopped rails and a wicket door. The left-hand cheek retains a barleysugar iron column, a remnant of the massive palm house which once stood between the house and the pavilion. The pavilion has 2-light ground-floor high-transomed windows with a decorative tile panel above, below the sill of the first-floor windows which are mostly 2-light. One bay from the porch to each side the first-floor window is shouldered with a coped gabled dormer with kneelers and a semi-circular fanlight over. Remains of glasshouses between pavilion and workshops block preserve barley-sugar columns and pretty cast-iron arches with foliage decoration. The banqueting hall is also brick with a pair of vertical boarded doors on the S side and a ventilator on the ridge. At either end of the yard to the N of the banqueting hall, 3-storey towers, square on plan, face into the yard, the right-hand tower with a curved conical slate roof. Towers have 3-bay fronts with and tall 2-light windows. INTERIOR: Not inspected but may retain features of interest. HISTORY: Isaac Singer, who developed the sewing machine, was noted for his hospitality and hosted children's parties in the riding school. Photographs showing the pavilion, the banqueting hall and the palm house are on display inside Oldway Mansion, along with Bridgman's plans and elevations which were published in The Architect in 1874.

Listing NGR: SX8878461591

External Links

• Wikidata Q33008706

External links are from the relevant listing authority and, where applicable, Wikidata. Wikidata IDs may be related buildings as well as this specific building. If you want to add or update a link, you will need to do so by editing the Wikidata entry.

Recommended Books

• 
  Bedfordshire, Huntingdonshire, and Peterborough (Pevsner Architectural Guides) (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Devon (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Herefordshire (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Drawing up a Local Listed Building Consent Order: Historic England Advice Note 6
• 
  Kent: West and the Weald: The Buildings of England (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Staffordshire (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)