Tracy Park
Sold for more than £12,000 to General Sir William Gabriel Davy in 1820, it was much altered and rebuilt by his son, a prominent Freemason, who adorned the estate with many Masonic symbols.
[3] Standing stones, thought to be the remains of a long barrow, just under a mile from the house, suggest that the site was occupied at an even earlier date.
[5] The estate was purchased from John de Tracye's descendants in 1595 by William Wintor, who likely built the house a few years later.
[9] Gill retained the western façade, but embellished the slightly projecting central three bays with an overpowering Doric tetrastyle porch.
[12] These are constructed principally of rubble, but dressed with bath stone ashlar which frames heraldry peculiar to the Davy family.
Opposite the entrance piers, and deliberately complementing them, is a three-story farmhouse built in about 1845; this has been given heavy Grecian detailing, a blind pediment and a classical balustrade to its precincts.
"[11] Two large pilasters sit between the outer pairs of windows on either side of the facade; perhaps intended to complement the porch, they rise only to the first floor and are crowned with heavy stone crosses.
On the western facade's left side is a single-story 19th century extension; it has a central door (beneath a pediment) between two windows.
Tracy Park's tower has an upper-most floor, completely surrounded by a slightly projecting Italiante balcony, supported by corbels, appears as a rectangular cupola and has Ionic pilasters at each corner; this structure is surmounted with a large finial.
[3] Amongst these additions are symbols associated with freemasonry: the cross of Lorraine finials crowning the main entrance piers;[3] the twin cylindrical gate piers at the south-west entrance[3] bear resemblance to the twin pillars, Boaz and Jachin;[17] and the deep engravings in an overmantel in what is now the hotel restaurant, described by English Heritage as "masonic emblems".
[11] Other Masonic references include the motto "In hoc signo vinces" carved above the mansion's principal entrance, taken from the standard of a Commander of the Knights Templar.
[18] On the south front are paneled twin buttresses, flanking the entrance and crowned with crosses, which seem to serve no structural purpose; they are possibly a further reference to the pillars of Boaz and Jachin.
The lamb and flag motif carved into the pediment of the entrance porch is not only the crest of the Davy family, but also a symbol of the Knights Templar and Freemasonry.
[22][23] In the family's absence, the house had been let from at least 1912 to Charles Samuel Clarke (1873−1947),[24] a director of the Imperial Tobacco Company,[25] who eventually bought the property from Helen Hodges in 1926.
