Exmouth, Devon - A la Ronde, 16 sided house - postcard

Postcard
• Picture / Image:  A la Ronde, [Exmouth], Devon
• Publisher:  National Trust
• Postally used:  no
• Stamp:  n/a
• Postmark(s):  n/a
• Sent to:  n/.a
• Notes / condition: 

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Text from the free encyclopedia WIKIPEDIA may appear below to give a little background information (internal links may not  work) :

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A La Ronde is an 18th-century 16-sided house located near Lympstone, Exmouth, Devon, England, and in the ownership of the National Trust. The house was built for two spinster cousins, Jane and Mary Parminter. It is a Grade I listed building,^[1] as are the adjacent Point-In-View chapel, school and almshouses,^[2] together with a manse,^[3] which were also built by the cousins. The gardens are Grade II listed in the National Register of Historic Parks and Gardens.^[4]

The Parminter family, which could be traced back in North Devon as far back as 1600, had acquired considerable wealth as merchants. Jane was the daughter of Barnstaple wine merchant John Parminter who had a business in Lisbon, where she was born in 1750.^[5] Jane grew up in London and became guardian to her orphan cousin Mary. On her father's death in 1784, she decided to embark on the Grand Tour accompanied by her invalid sister Elizabeth, her younger orphaned cousin, and a female friend from London.^[6]

The two cousins became greatly attached to each other and in 1795 decided to set up home together in Devon. They negotiated the purchase of fifteen acres of land near Exmouth. Once their house had been built they lived secluded and somewhat eccentric lives for many years until 1811 when Miss Jane died.^[7]

The house was completed in about 1796, and its design is supposedly based on the Basilica of San Vitale. It consisted of 20 rooms, the ground floor ones radiating out from a 10.7 metres (35 ft) high hallway, named ""The Octagon"", and originally connected by sliding doors. The lower ground floor housed a wine cellar, strong room and kitchen and an upper octagonal gallery housed an intricate hand-crafted frieze. Between the main rooms were triangular-shaped closets with diamond shaped windows. Much of the internal decoration was produced by the two cousins, whose handicraft skills were excellent. The house also contained many of the objets d'art, especially shells, which the cousins brought back from their European Tour.

The terms of Mary's will specified that the property could be inherited only by ""unmarried kinswomen"". This condition held firm until in 1886 the house was transferred to the Reverend Oswald Reichel, a brother of one of the former occupants.^[6] Reichel, the sole male owner in over two hundred years, was responsible for substantial structural changes. These included the construction of a water tower and laundry room, the installation of a bathroom and central heating, the construction of upstairs bedrooms with dormer windows, the fitting of first-floor windows, a heavy pulley dumb-waiter and speaking tubes, the replacement of the original thatch with roof tiles and the addition of an external catwalk.

Since taking ownership, conservation measures by The National Trust have included removal of all but one the very large central heating radiators installed by Reichel, restoration of the wall coverings from a deep red to the original pale green and rigging of the delicate shell gallery on the uppermost storey of the house with a CCTV system to allow observation without risk of damage. The original kitchen and strong room on the lower ground floor now function as a modern kitchen and tea-room.

Family tradition maintains that the house was designed by Miss Jane herself. It is more likely, however, that the plans were drawn up by ""a Mr. Lowder"" mentioned by a 19th-century writer. Mary's aunt by marriage, also Mary, had a sister Anne Glass, who married a Commander John Lowder, a banker. In 1778 Lowder became a property developer and built Lansdowne Place West in Bath.

Commander Lowder, however, had a son, also named John (1781–1829) who practised as a gentlemen architect in Bath. Although only 17 years of age when A La Ronde was built, it is entirely feasible that the younger Lowder designed the house. In 1816 he went on to design the unusual Bath and District National School (demolished 1896), a 32-sided building with wedge-shaped classrooms. A La Ronde may reasonably be interpreted as an early prototype for the much larger later project.^[5]

type=printed

city/ region=exmouth

period=post-war (1945-present)

publisher=national trust

postage condition=unposted

number of items=single

size=continental/ modern (150x100 mm)