Originally designed as an Italianate palace, there were no funds to complete it on such a scale, so it was constructed as two smaller, linked buildings for the Earl and his cousin, the local rector.

The house is a 11,818 sq ft (1,097.9 m2) square block constructed from stuccoed brick, with stone dressings and has hipped slate roofs with red ridge tiles.

There are small square windows on the upper floors designed to resemble the gunports of George Wyndham's ship, HMS Hawke.

[2][3][4][5] The Devonshire historian William Pole (d.1635)[6] gives the arms of "Bolegh of Blackburgh Bolley" as: Argent, on a chevron sable three bezants between three torteaux.

[11] From 1943 to 1946 or 1947, while still owned by the Quakers, it was used a YHA Youth Hostel known as Spiceland (named after the location of a Friends Meeting House, several miles away in the parish of Uffculme).

[18] The developers also plan to restore the seventy-foot towers which originally stood on the east and west sides and put a glass roof on the inner courtyard as well as adding a new low level extension.

According to Country Life (magazine), Blackborough had not yet "lost its roof entirely — something which could have been its death knell, due to the prohibitive costs of replacement".