Maristow

A large eighteenth-century house in an idyllic setting overlooking the Tavy estuary. It belonged to the Heywood family until it was acquired by Sir Massey Lopes in 1798, and the house remained the family seat until the early C20. Three recent fires, the latest in 1982, left the top floor gutted and much else damaged but the building was restored by 2000. The west front was a remodelled in 1907-9 by George & Yeates who added a central two­ storey porch and lengthened the wings.  The wings have steep pedimented gable-ends with lunettes; niches with classical statues below. The south front still reveals the C18 house of the Heywood family.  It has seven bays, the centre three projecting slightly, with a raised attic floor with oval windows. The chapel projects from the house to the east.  It is a vigorously Gothic addition of 1871 by St Aubyn in crazy-paving limestone with yellow stone dressings. The folly is made up of architectural fragments from the previous chapel, demolished by St Aubyn; it also has two Ionic columns, perhaps from the front door of the house.  There is a handsome pair of 1839 lodges by Charles Fowler; two-storeyed, with rusticated ground floor, triple-arched first-floor windows, and pyramid roofs.    White (1850) noted that it ‘is delightfully seated on the east bank of the Tavy . . . The mansion has tasteful and well wooded grounds . . . It was visited twice by George III, Queen Charlotte, and three of the Princesses, during their sojurn at Saltram, in 1789, and they were delighted with the romantic scenery of the grounds and woods.’  Stockdale described it as ‘an extensive & finely wooded demesne ... although the mansion is not remark­able for architectural embellishments, it is distinguished as one of the most delightful in the county.’  There is an Italian style garden to the south. There is a folly in the quarry in the woodland to the north. The woodland is being managed by the residents who have cleared the ponticum and planted new native and ornamental trees.

House listed Grade II* chapel listed Grade II.

Cherry & Pevsner: The Buildings of England – Devon, 1989: 561-2
T Gray: The Garden History of Devon, 1995: 150