Sandridge, Stoke Gabriel
Sandridge is an historic estate in the parish of Stoke Gabriel in Devon, situated on high ground at the head of the River Dart estuary.
[1] The present grade II* listed[2] Italianate style Regency mansion house known as Sandridge House was built in 1805[3] by Lady Ashburton (née Elizabeth Baring, the widow of John Dunning, 1st Baron Ashburton of Spitchwick Park in the parish of Widdecombe in Devon), to the design of John Nash.
John Swete (d.1821) recorded in his Travel Journal that he had accompanied Mr Dunning (later Baron Ashburton) on an inspection tour around his new estate at Sandridge.
[25] But his main acquisition of lands had been to the detriment of the ancient Gould family of Devonshire, which traced its roots back to a certain "John Gold", a crusader present at the Siege of Damietta in (1218–19).
[30] It had been Dunning's original intention to build a grand mansion on his estate of Sandridge, as he informed Rev John Swete to whom he was showing that new purchase, also in the company of Sir Robert Palk, 1st Baronet (1717-1798), who also expanded a large mansion and planted vast expanses of woodland at Haldon House, having also had a change of mind as to location, in his case from Tor Mohun to Haldon.
He was at first "struck with the beauty and grandeur of the spot (i.e. of Sandridge) and...then express'd an intention of raising an house on it that should be more worthy than the present of the situation".
As for Lord Ashburton's change of mind, Swete remarked: "He soon dropt all thoughts of proceding with the plans he had form'd at Sandridge; Park indeed was a situation more congenial to Lord Ashburton's mind; it was wild and romantic; he delighted its softening the harsh and rude features of the scene around him and in its meliorating the grounds, which lay almost in a state of nature, neglected and uncultur'd".
Lord Ashburton created at Spitchwick (on the site of a chapel dedicated to St. Laurence[31]) a mansion in which "he much delighted to reside"[32] and where he "escap'd from the trammels of State and the bustle of the Great Town, and enjoy'd the otium cum dignitate.
