Gothic Revival Houses, Seaton, Devon

I've been fascinated by these houses for as long as I can remember. All in the same style along this stretch of the road, they are nevertheless all slightly different...and wonderfully quirky.

Built in the local tradition with flint rubble walls and dressed with stone quoins, there's a lovely mix of Tudor-style window dressings, ornamental chimney stacks, gabled windows and a fab gothic turret on two of the houses. Decorative ridge tiles adorn the roofs and most of the windows contain diamond leaded glass.

I wasn't able to find any history of these particular houses to begin with, or who the architect was, not appearing to be in the British Listed Buildings. I did find them on the old OS Maps though, built sometime between the two maps dated 1891 & 1904 which puts them in the late Victorian and early Edwardian period. There are several revival styles with many variations from that period, and these have all the hallmarks of Gothic Revival.

However, with grateful thanks to Georgia, who gave me some information in her comment below, including that they were built in 1901 by an architect who worked for Clinton Estates. I've been able to ascertain that the architect was David Carr. He lived in Beer and designed several of the lovely buildings there as well as Upcott House in Seaton.

There's an organic quality to these buildings; gently sloping hipped roofs with overhangs & split levels and the soft window arches, interspersed with and contrasting nicely with the pointed gables. They bear a similarity to Grosvenor Mansions in Sidmouth, designed by the architect R.W. Sampson, both designs looking as if they'd sprouted from the ground rather than built by human means.

The semi-detached house in the above photo has been built to make a distinction between the two halves of the building: a split roof, with the right side lower than the left (to compensate for the downward slope of the road) and the windows following suit. Although most terraced and semi-detached housing have the same roofline, even while compensating for a hill, revivalist styles were sometimes built to emulate the evolution of a building, such as a mediaeval church which has been altered and added to over the centuries, and which may have been the reason for this quirky distinction.

Below, one of the two fabulous turreted bay windows.

The opposite corner across an intersecting road (below), mirrored by a turret on the other corner house.

Below, this semi-detached has the addition of what looks like an original porch, which I really like - and is often seen in Edwardian architecture - although this one consists of the same flint and rubble material instead of cast iron, which was more usually the case.
 

The very last of the houses, below, looking quite magical with several high gables and more split roofs.

And finally, two photos of the first house through the fence of another garden, with some delightful Sweet Peas, which caught my eye the following summer.