Former public house with malt loft
and skittle alley, now two attached private houses.
Mid C19, converted in 1939 by Michael Cardew. Stone rubble with granite
quoins. Wenford Bridge House has a rag slate roof with gable ends and brick
end stacks. The former malt loft to the right (now The Brewhouse) has a
brick stack on the right-hand gable end. Single-storey range to right,
originally the skittle alley, has slate roof with gable ends; it is now part
of The Brewhouse.
Wenford Bridge House is on the left and has a double depth plan with central
entrance; bar originally in left-hand room heated by end stack with smaller
bar to rear. Living room on right and kitchen to rear right, both heated by
end stack. Stair to rear of passage and rear door offset. The Brewhouse is a
two-storey range to the right with a one-room plan forming an obtuse angle
with the front elevation of the house; ground floor heated by an end stack
with cloam oven to front right and originally boiler to rear right. The
former malt loft on the first floor is heated by an end stack with a loading
door on front elevation. A single-storey range further to the right,
rectangular in plan, was originally the skittle alley with a raked floor,
and is now bedrooms in The Brewhouse.
Wenfordbridge (also known as Wenford
Bridge), a terminus of the Bodmin & Wadebridge Railway, opened in 1834 and
handled coal, sea-sand and granite. By the 1880s the Wenford Inn, located to
the north of the terminus, was open. Outbuildings attached to the east of
the inn were later converted to a skittle alley. In 1939 the potter Michael
Cardew bought the Wenford Inn (by then closed and falling into disrepair)
from St Austell Brewery and its outbuildings.
Between 1923 and 1926 Michael Cardew OBE (1901-1983) was apprenticed to
Bernard Leach (1887-1979) in St Ives; Leach described Cardew as his ‘first
and best student’. In 1926 he established the Winchcombe Pottery in
Gloucestershire where he began to find success with lead-glazed slipware
made in the C18 tradition (he sold Winchcombe in 1945). In 1939 he bought
the former inn at Wenfordbridge to create a family home and establish a
pottery in Cornwall. From 1942 Cardew spent much time in Africa, and in 1950
he became Senior Pottery Officer in the Ministry of Trade in Nigeria, and
until 1965 Cardew spent only two months a year in Cornwall, the rest in
Nigeria. In 1965 Cardew returned to live permanently at Wenfordbridge, from
when he wrote his influential book ‘Pioneer Pottery’ (published in 1969).
The publication was principally the result of a two-week seminar -
‘Fundamental Pottery’ - held at Wenfordbridge in August 1959, and attended
by Bernard Leach, Katherine Pleydell-Bouverie and Marianne de Trey, amongst
others. Cardew’s son Seth (1934-2016) joined him at Wenfordbridge in 1971,
and took on the house after his father’s death in 1983, until selling it in
2004. |
