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Kirkham House is a late medieval stone house located in
PaigntonPaignton is a coastal town in Devon in England. Together with Torquay and Brixham it forms the unitary authority of Torbay which was created in 1998. The Torbay area is a holiday destination known as the English Riviera. Paignton's population in the United Kingdom Census of 2001 was 48,251.It has...
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DevonDevon is a large county in England. The county is also referred to as Devonshire, although that is an unofficial name, rarely used inside of the county itself and often indicating a traditional or historical context. The county shares borders with Cornwall to the west and Dorset and Somerset to...
,
EnglandEngland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west and the North Sea to the east, with the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
.
It is not known exactly when Kirkham House was built, although the design suggests that it is of 14th or 15th century origin. It has been called "The Priest's House", suggesting a link with the church, but it may have been built as the residence of a prosperous local tradesman. The ground floor of the house contains a dining room and a large vaulted hall that would have been used for entertaining guests, while the first floor contains a gallery and three bedchambers.
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__FORCETOC__ thumb
Kirkham House is a late medieval stone house located in
PaigntonPaignton is a coastal town in Devon in England. Together with Torquay and Brixham it forms the unitary authority of Torbay which was created in 1998. The Torbay area is a holiday destination known as the English Riviera. Paignton's population in the United Kingdom Census of 2001 was 48,251.It has...
,
DevonDevon is a large county in England. The county is also referred to as Devonshire, although that is an unofficial name, rarely used inside of the county itself and often indicating a traditional or historical context. The county shares borders with Cornwall to the west and Dorset and Somerset to...
,
EnglandEngland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west and the North Sea to the east, with the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
.
History
It is not known exactly when Kirkham House was built, although the design suggests that it is of 14th or 15th century origin. It has been called "The Priest's House", suggesting a link with the church, but it may have been built as the residence of a prosperous local tradesman. The ground floor of the house contains a dining room and a large vaulted hall that would have been used for entertaining guests, while the first floor contains a gallery and three bedchambers. The kitchen was an outbuilding that exists today only as a few ruined walls, and there is a small garden adjacent to the house.
Mrs Ada Frances Jennings bequeathed the house to the nation in 1960, together with a sum of money for its repair. The stone and plasterwork have been extensively renovated, although many of the original
oakAn oak is a tree or shrub in the genus Quercus , of which about 400 species exist. "Oak" may also appear in the names of species in related genera, notably Lithocarpus...
beams and carvings can still be seen. The building contains reproduction
furnitureFurniture is the mass noun for the movable objects intended to support various human activities such as seating and sleeping in beds, to hold objects at a convenient height for work using horizontal surfaces above the ground, or to store things...
and
tapestriesTapestry is a form of textile art, woven on a vertical loom. It is composed of two sets of interlaced threads, those running parallel to the length and those parallel to the width ; the warp threads are set up under tension on a loom, and the weft thread is passed back and forth across part or...
in the medieval style.
Visiting
Kirkham House is managed by
English HeritageEnglish Heritage . is a non-departmental public body of the United Kingdom government with a broad remit of managing the historic built environment of England. It is currently sponsored by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport...
, and it is open to the public at certain times of year. The building is located off Cecil Road at
Ordnance SurveyOrdnance Survey is an executive agency of the United Kingdom government. It is the national mapping agency for Great Britain, and one of the world's largest producers of maps...
map reference SX885610. For more details on visiting times, see the link below.
External links