Oakhurst - Truly a House of Prowse
- Scott Boyd
- Nov 28
- 5 min read
Preface:
Oakhurst was originally built by Albert Philpott Prowse (1817-1893) for his son Albert Samuel Whitchurch Prowse and his new bride, Annie Mower Wakefield, who married in 1881, however, by 1891 the marriage had failed and ASW Prowse and his two young children were back living with AP Prowse at his Yennadon Estate down the road. ASW's daughter Addie married Henry Maddock in 1910 and moved into Oakhurst, where the couple raised their four children: Aubrey, Dorothy, Walter, and Huburt.
What follows is the account of Scott & Fiona Boyd, current owners of Oakhurst and their discoveries during renovations.
Oakhurst - House & Stable
Oakhurst wasn’t quite love at first sight. When we first walked through the gate, the house looked worn and forgotten, faded paint, a concrete-tiled roof, and the feeling it had been patiently waiting for someone to notice it again. But my wife, ever the optimist, didn’t flinch. “It just needs love,” she said. And, as usual, she was right.
Beneath the tired exterior lay a house full of character, beautiful original features, solid craftsmanship and a story worth rescuing. We moved in on 20 December 2020, spent a few months learning its quirks and creaks, and then brought in an architect to help us imagine what Oakhurst could become.
What followed was nothing short of a transformation. We stripped the house back to its bones, off came the roof tiles, replaced with slate, just as it once would have been. Using an old photograph as our guide, we tracked down new ‘four tooth’ terracotta ridge tiles and finials to match the originals. Slowly, Oakhurst began to look like itself again. Sadly, the only thing we couldn’t do was remove the years of paint now covering the original red brickwork.
The following year was a blur of restoration, ceilings removed, plaster stripped, every ground-floor board lifted. Then came a full rewire, replumb and an air-source heat pump with underfloor heating throughout the ground floor. Modern comfort, carefully tucked inside Victorian walls.
And as we peeled back each layer, Oakhurst revealed its past. We found an old playing card (circa a 1900-1930) that had slipped between floorboards, Bakelite switches still wired in place, and the original bell system from the house’s first telephone. Outside, hidden within an old garden wall, we unearthed glass bottles, jars, clock parts, broken crockery and the rusted remains of oil lamps, every object a quiet whisper of the lives lived here before ours.
Then came the stable, where we needed to prove the building’s historic merit. Dartmoor National Park wouldn’t allow it to become a holiday let, as their building policy stated, 'it had to be built from stone or cob and not a lesser material, such as brick'. Due to this, we had to prove the building had some ‘historic merit, Oakhurst had a surprise waiting.
Before moving here, we lived in Horrabridge for fourteen years, during which I repeatedly tried, and failed, to find a brick from the old Horrabridge brickworks. One of our first discoveries at Oakhurst was a broken brick stamped with the mark of those very brickworks, hidden in the frog (the indent of a brick). Not only did I finally have my brick, I suddenly had a house and stables full of them.
Even better, these bricks told their own story. They appear to be early examples with frogs, accidentally laid upside down so the frog wasn’t filled with cement, meaning they never gained the strength they were designed for. Perhaps the builders had never seen bricks with frogs before? With help from both the Yelverton and Tavistock Historical Societies, we uncovered more of their history. The brickworks had a short life (closing in 1890) due to poor clay quality, but in that time its bricks helped build Oakhurst, Yennadon House, Albert’s home, and parts of Burrator Reservoir. Not only did they post their findings in their society's newsletters, they printed them in the Dartmoor News Magazine.
Thankfully, a close friend of ours, who also lives here in Dousland, had a copy of The Book of Meavy. This was my first meeting with the Prowse family, and their history with our home. In this book we were introduced to Albert Philpott Prowse and his involvement with the building of Oakhurst and his immediate family. This book was a great help with the research we were doing.
I’m an old romantic at heart, I loved seeing the faces of the people who lived here, who looked out of the same windows that I now do. The view may have changed slightly but I’m privileged to see what they saw.
Armed with the evidence of the Prowse family and the brickworks, and on our third attempt, planning permission was granted. The stable could finally be restored.
This evidence not only gave the property some historic merit it helped prove the house was built before 1910, the date the Land Registry officially has the house having been built. An additional piece of proof being the Ordinance Survey map of 1883-1886, with Oakhurst shown on it.
The last four-legged resident of the stable was Macduff, “Duffy”, who left in 1976. As we dug up the concrete floor, more hidden treasures surfaced: bottles, jars, rusted metal and what may have been either a tractor weight or a tethering stone used to keep livestock from wandering. We even found two ceramic eggs once placed to encourage hens where to lay, proof someone here understood their poultry.
Among the rubble were carved granite profiles, origin unknown. Oakhurst has no granite features, so their story remains a mystery, one we hope to solve someday.
But our most remarkable find almost went unnoticed. A tarnished brass plaque, just another piece of scrap metal, until we turned it over and read the engraving: A. P. Prowse. Suddenly, the house’s history had a name and a face. I like to imagine it on an office door, Prowse inside, busy with the affairs of the Great Western Railway, where he worked as chief accountant. If Oakhurst ever needed proof of its lineage, that plaque was it. A tangible link between builder and building, between past and present.
And now, we’re fortunate enough to be part of its story.
To end, I’d like to thank both Ian and Vee for the information and pictures they have been kind enough to share with us.
Epilogue:
The renovations to the stable are to convert it into a Holiday Let. Scott & Fiona estimate the renovations being complete by the end of 2026. For more details contact:
Scott & Fiona Boyd
Oakhurst
Lake Lane
Dousland
Devon
PL20 6LZ
07365 268826
Comments