- Parkland
- C19
The old mansion, damaged by fire in 1798, was transformed in1810 for John Inglet Fortesque by James Green. The drive sweeps up to the large one-storeyed Greek Doric port-cochere on the north side which Green made the main entrance front. In 1806 Polwhele wrote that it had been reported to him that ‘ before the south front of the mansion is an extensive stream which supplies the fish ponds that cover the greatest part of the vale, below the church and the mansion, including the lawn’. William Fortescue (1687-1749), at Barnstaple Grammar School with John Gay, poet; became a barrister and Master of the Rolls and friend of Alexander Pope. Stockdale described it as ‘ a very splendid spacious mansion built about twenty years since at an expense of £4,000. The principal, or north front, is embellished with a colonnade of the most chaste Grecian Doric Order & surrounded by excessive plantations of the most luxuriant description, indeed the late worthy possessor John Smyth Fortesque Esq. who succeeded his father in 1790, spared no expense to render this estate every way desirable, a short time however previous to his decease this estate was sold to the late Lord Ashburton.’ White (1850) noted that it was the ‘pleasant seat of Lord Ashburton’. The woodland grounds, set in rolling hills, include a serpentine lake.
Buckland House listed Grade II*
Cherry & Pevsner: The Buildings of England – Devon, 1989: 231
T. Gray: The Garden History of Devon, 1995: 60
