Woodway House
| Woodway House | |
| Devon | |
|---|---|
 Woodway House | |
| Location | |
| Grid reference: | SX94357378 |
| Location: | 50°33’15"N, 3°29’34"W |
| Village: | Teignmouth |
| History | |
| Built 1815 | |
| For: | Capt. James Spratt |
| Country house | |
| Cottage orné | |
| Information | |
Woodway House is a small country houise in Teignmouth, in southern Devon, built in the "cottage orné" style by Captain James Spratt of the Royal Navy. It is modelled Horace Walpole's (1717–1797) Thames-side villa, Strawberry Hill.[1]
The estate was at one time a farm on lands held by the Bishops of Exeter. Captain Spratt built his 'cottage' here in 1815, at the end of the Napoleonic Wars.
The house today is a Grade II Listed Building,[2] protected as a classic example of the romantic Devonian "chocolate box" cottage orné style of architecture. Its gate piers and walls are separately listed.[3]
History
Woodway had formerly been a farm, probably known as 'Leafield' and its farmhouse was originally constructed in the form of a Devon longhouse. The farm was owned by Brimage family until it was sold to Captain Spratt.
A mansion house on the lower boundary of the Woodway grounds was known as Gorway. Demolished in the 1970s, it was named after the Norman baron, Serlo de la Gore. Woodway would have been part of its feudal holdings and could have been the home farm. Gorway's large stables, gate house and coach house survived and were for many years used by a company that maintained garden machinery.
In around 1747 at Twickenham in Middlesex, Horace Walpole built a villa for himself called Strawberry Hill House and thus set a fashion for rural romantic Gothic-style retreats. A number were built by retired colonial administrators and military men who liked verandahs, spacious lawns and the sunny climes of Devon.
In 1815 Captain James Spratt, the hero of many a bloody naval engagement of the Napoleonic Wars, built his cottage here in Teignmouth in 1815, as a large cob and thatch cottage.
From around 1886, the Whalleys lived at Woodway, and appear to have been friends of the Spratts for some time previous to their purchase. Lt.Col.P.R.Whalley, D.S.O. sold 'Wodewaye' in 1951 and the Griffith family became owners until around 1992.
The spelling of the name as 'Wodewaye' may have been used by the Whalleys from the romantic notion that Woodaway derived from "Woden's Way",[4] rather than a colloquial use of the word wood, however another possibility suggested by the 1890 and 1860 OS maps is that there was another house called "Woodway" further up Woodway Road, next to "Luchana" and the "Grove". Later its name was changed due to the endless confusion between Woodway House and Woodway or Wodeway Cottage. The Griffith family were therefore able to use the name Woodway House from the early 1950s.
A number of features of the old farm remained, including a lane that had joined up Woodway Road with the Dawlish Road and with the Gorway Mansion. This was always referred to as the "moat".
The boundary walls are of old "Devon hedges" in several places, with stone sides and planted with fine oaks, elms, and other trees and shrubs. The field beyond the front garden was called the Lea Field on the 1890 OS map, indicating that it was the first of the farm fields originally created from tree felling, etc. when the farm was established.
The duck house is a cob-built building, sadly no longer thatched. A duck pond was located nearby, but no sign of this remains. A number of white glazed earthenware eggs have been found in the soil around this spot, being used to encourage a broody hen or duck to lay more eggs. Cherry laurel bushes bordered the lawn on the right facing the bottom of the garden, together with a boat-shaped box hedge. The path was edged with stones that seem to have been removed from a "Devon hedge", judging by their size and type. Rose of Sharon shrubs lined the path running to the old school room at the front of the house. Barked-wood poles were used to construct the arches that covered three of the exits from the front lawn, each having trailing roses trained onto them.
The 1825 drawing shows a number of pine trees and a marble monument on the front lawn, topped with a flag of St George, which commemorated the Battle of Trafalgar. Pieces of this structure were still in existence in the 1960s, dumped at the bottom of the garden. This drawing was done by Miss. P. Whalley of Deanway, Branscombe, Seaton, Devon, during the time that Thomas Spratt was living at Wodewaye.
In the back garden of the house is a red sandstone building, cobbled inside, which was used latterly as the woodshed and fuel store (paraffin, diesel, etc.) A collapsed stable lay to the right-hand side as viewed from the front. The floor was lined with bricks with a central drainage channel and drain. This building had been two stories high and was probably used for the farm horses, the coach or "trap" horses, usually hackneys[5] being kept in the stable off from the central courtyard of the old farm buildings. Near the old greenhouse in the back garden was an "apple rack" with several drawers for storing the crop from the orchard. This apple rack was used until the 1970s when the structure became unsound and was not replaced.
Design and construction
Woodway House shows three clear phases of construction, with the cottage orné of the early 19th century, the old farm buildings and the tutor's living quarters and a classroom, built before 1825. James Spratt had three sons and six daughters, making home tuition both economical and appropriate.
The identifiable remains of the old farm buildings consist firstly of a barn with a hay loft that collapsed in a gale and was demolished in the 1960s. A cobbled courtyard with a deep well, granite trough and pump surrounded by outbuildings which include an upper story which had a ladder running up to it, probably for access to the stable hand's dwelling. Another pump was located inside the side wing which was the boiler house, with its chimney. The clothes were boiled here on washing days and the pump drew water from the well outside, using a system of lead pipes. A door from the courtyard, now removed, led directly into the main room of what was the living area of the farm. This large room still had a "polished" mud floor in 1951 and the large kitchen fireplace is still present. In the floor of this room was a hatch that led down to a bottle shaped storage cellar with a wood ladder, hidden when the floor was tiled over in the 1950s.
The cottage orné part of the dwelling is built of cob, the foundations of the walls being only huge split oak trunks resting on the native bedrock of red sandstone. The walls are between three and four feet thick, giving a cool building in summer and a good insulation against the cold of winter. The thatch is also a highly effective insulator. The Devon saying is that "All cob wants is a good hat and a good pair of shoes", meaning that cob will last for hundreds of years as long as water is kept away. Its other value is that, unlike bricks, the material is a single unit, giving great integrity and stability. Unfortunately Woodway suffered from water damage in the late 1980s due to an old chimney flue open to the rain. This necessitated much remedial work and construction of a substantial side buttress. The height of the old farm dwelling was considerably increased when the cottage orné was added.
A rare survival internally is the system of bell pulls and bells installed to summon servants to the various living rooms and bedrooms of the house. This system works via wires and pulleys which all lead to the area outside the big kitchen, this being the servants area of the house in Victorian times. The system still worked in the 1980s. A number of ornate fireplaces survived, although some were hidden behind wood screens. A constant concern was the chance of setting the thatch alight. The 1825 drawing shows no weather cock, however one was added later and acted also as a lightning conductor. The French windows are a major part of the design effect, as they seem to run continuously from the ground to the first floor of the building. Inside, these windows had large wood screens that could be unfolded to close off these ground floor "doors" or windows as they effectively are on the first floor. The rolls of black cloth used to black out the other windows during Second World War were still stored in the attic in the 1970s.
The front door is enclosed by a porch, however the design of the front door surround shows that it was built to be exposed to the weather and the porch was added later. A false or blocked up Gothic chapel-style window faces the driveway. With the age of this part of the house, it is possible that the window was blocked up to save on window tax after the new schoolroom and tutors living quarters were added.[6]
Gardens and wildlife
An old orchard with twenty or so trees was complemented by a new orchard planted in the late 1960s. A wide variety of cooking and eating apples were joined by pear tree varieties, cherries and plums. The flora of the old orchard sward was dominated by primroses and violets. Detailed plans of these primroses were plotted yearly in the 1970s to show the change in distribution. In addition to the wild type, white, red, pink and multi-headed varieties grew here. Green alkanet (Pentaglottis sempervirens) grew here, together with black bryony, flowering currant, horseradish, butcher's broom (Ruscus aculeatus), bluebells (blue, pink and white), Aquilegia and other several other species.
The grounds of the house were particularly rich in ferns, mosses, liverworts, and lichens. The lichens grow in profusion on the old walls, slate roofing tiles and tree bark, especially of the older specimen trees, such as the pedunculate oak (Quercus robur), sessile oak (Quercus petraea), horse-chestnuts and the copper beeches (Fagus sylvatica cuprea). Xanthoria parietina was a common lichen growth on the boiler house tiles. The giant sequoia (Sequoiadendron giganteum) has many small depressions in its bark made by treecreepers.
A feature of the garden running down from the verandah is the New Zealand cabbage trees (Cordyline australis) growing to the left hand side when facing. These can be seen in the 1825 drawing and although the main growth was killed off by severe winters, new growths always appeared. Old wisteria trees are a feature of the verandah, together with passion flowers and banksia roses.
The grounds had many fine trees, and in addition to those already mentioned, there were Monterey cypress (Cupressus macrocarpa), yew (Taxus baccata), Laburnum, Turkey oaks (Quercus cerris), black poplar, strawberry tree, elms and holm oaks (Quercus ilex). The knopper gall grows from a distortion of the growing acorn, greatly reducing the fecundity of the oak host. It has a two phase life-cycle that requires both pedunculate oak and Turkey oak. Woodway gardens have this species and Woodway House was one of the first places in Devon to record both life-cycle stages of this invading insect. The insect concerned (Andricus quercuscalicis) came from the continent to Devon via the Channel Islands. Large numbers of knopper galls were sent from Woodway for research purposes in the late 1970s when the infestation first struck (Griffith 2006). A feature of the old hedge forming a boundary by the garage was the pennywort (Umbilicus rupestris) a typical plant of Devon country lanes. The winter heliotrope is a distinctive weed species and lady's smock is an early spring flower.
Outside links
 |
("Wikimedia Commons" has material about Woodway House) |
- Thomas Spratt at Trafalgar
- Trafalgar Wood, Spratt and HMS Defiance.
- The Life of Thomas Abel Brimage Spratt.
- The Life of Horace Walpole.
- The Teignmouth Harbour Commission.
- Nelson. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Accessed: 2010-02-05
References
- ↑ Evans, Tony and Green, Candida Lycett: 'English Cottages' (1982)
- ↑ Woodway House - British Listed Buildings
- ↑ Gates piers and walls at the West Entrance to Woodway House - British Listed Buildings
- ↑ Griffiths, G.D.& E.G.C. (1965). History Of Teignmouth. Brunswick Press. Teignmouth. P.68.
- ↑ Peters, J.E.C.: 'Discovering Traditional Farm Buildings' (Shire Books, 2003) ISBN 0-85263-556-7; page 56
- ↑ Bennett, Graham : 'Coin News' April 2006; pp 51-52 ISSN 0958-1391
