On a wonderful site overlooking the Tamar, still just outside the built up area of Plymouth. A large rambling house in its own grounds of medieval origin, but chiefly Tudor and early C19; now divided into retirement flats. The manor was held by the Foliots in the early Moiddle Ages, and then by a number of families ( Gorges, Bonvilles, Copplestones and Bampfyldes) before being purchased by the Radcliffe family in 1741. Polwhele wrote in 1797 that there were ‘growing in the recesses of the front of Warleigh house four myrtles of extraordinary size and beauty, which had stood the brunt of many severe winters without any covering whatever. The loftiest of them was 27 feet high and the wood near the ground measured one foot and half in circumference and was proportionally large all the way up: this was of the broad-leaved sort; the stem of which measured two feet in circumferance. Of the four, two were broad-leaved, one small-leaved, as before mentioned, and the other of the double-blossomed kind. Twenty-four faggots of nearly the common size were made of the brush wood and the stems, main branches and the principal parts of the roots were in weight four hundred and fifty-two pounds.’ Stockdale noted that it was ‘a very interesting venerable mansion situated in a romantic dell, heavily wooded.’ Included in the grounds are a brick dovecote, chapel and boathouse. Near the house is a good circular brick dovecote and a large stone barn. Close to the river is a pleasingly quirky little Gothic chapel with castellated gables; a boathouse is tucked in beneath.
Warleigh House is listed Grade II*, garden walls SSE, Boat House 110m WSW, and dovecote 80m E is listed Grade II
Cherry & Pevsner: The Buildings of England – Devon, 1989: 889
T Gray: The Garden History of Devon, 1995: 227-8
