- Flete House
Flete House is a Grade I listed country house at
Holbeton , in theSouth Hams region ofDevon ,England .Flete was a
Saxon estate, themanor being held by the Damarell family from 1066 until the time of Edward III.The earliest part of the house dates from the sixteenth century, and was substantially rebuilt around 1620 for Sir Charles Hele. The Hele family held the house until 1716, when the estate passed to the Bulteels. Additions were made to the house in both the early and the late eighteenth century. The house was heavilly remodelled in the Gothic style in 1835 by Mr J C Bulteel, which obliterated the early and late eighteenth century classical work and added castellations.
In 1878 the architect
Richard Norman Shaw undertook extensive building works for Henry Bingham Mildmay, remodelling and extending the house, while retaining the sixteenth/seventeenth century house to the south west. [http://www.imagesofengland.org.uk/Details/Default.aspx?id=100393&mode=quick]Flete House was used by the City of
Plymouth as a maternity hospital during and after theSecond World War . At the time the Second World War broke out, the estate was in the hands of Lieutenant-Colonel, the Lord Mildmay of Flete. The first baby to be born at Flete arrived on Monday July 14th 1941, and by the end of 1941 there had been a further 124 births. Lord Mildmay remained in residence at the House until his death in 1947 and was apparently often seen in the Wards.Dave Hill of the pop groupSlade was one of the babies born at the House.The hospital closed 8 May 1958, less than a month after the last baby was born there. Flete House was returned to the Mildmay family in 1959. [http://www.plymouthdata.info/Hospitals-Flete%20House%20MH.htm]
More recently, the Hall was owned by the
Country Houses Association until it went into liquidation in 2003. [http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/3319953.stm] [http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/devon/3320907.stm]References
*"Country Life" Vol. 38, 29 November 1915, 680
*Andrew Saint, 1976, "Richard Norman Shaw", 211-16 Yale University PressReferences
External links
* [http://www.imagesofengland.org.uk/Details/Default.aspx?id=100393&mode=quick Images of England: detaiiled architectural information of Flete House]
* [http://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/670656 Flete House on Geograph]
Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.
