Sandridge

A country house in landscaped grounds, hidden away above the east bank of the river Dart.  Built in 1805 by John Nash for the widowed Lady Ashburton; near the site of Capt John Davis’ house of the sixteenth century.  It is an excellent example of his informal villa rustica style.  Stuccoed, with deep eaves.  The rounded bay at one end carried up as a tower, with three oeil-de­-boeuf top windows, is very reminiscent of his slightly earlier Cronkhill in Shropshire.  Picturesque effects are achieved with a minimum of features; the curved tower acts as a foil both to the stockier square tower over the original entrance, and to the more fanciful ogee-spired turret over the service wing at the back. The impression is of a distant architectural composition in a Claude painting. To the right the arrangement is not original, for Nash’s long conservatory has gone.  White (1850) noted that it was ‘a large and beautiful mansion . . . but is now unoccupied’.  Stockdale described it as ‘an elegant mansion very delightfully situated and the sundry demesne fairly wooded’.

Sandridge is listed Grade II*

Cherry & Pevsner: The Buildings of England – Devon, 1989: 719
T Gray: The Garden History of Devon, 1995: 200