Cleeve House on the Cleeve Estate is situated on the outskirts of Ivybridge in Devon and was built in 1886 by the Sparrow family who were limestone merchants and owned quarries at Cattedown and Oreston in Plymouth. The most notable of these quarries being the ‘Bedford Quarry’ which later became known as the ‘Breakwater Quarry’ as it supplied all the 4,5000,000 tons of limestone blocks required to construct the breakwater in Plymouth Sound during the 1840’s, and that was some task.

Countless buildings in Plymouth were also built with stone from this quarry.

Leading into the estate is the old gatehouse and we carried out all the stonework to a ‘Hipped-roof’ extension which tripled the size of the existing footprint of the building, and then converted for residential use.  We also constructed a new chimney stack for the gatehouse.

The stones for the chimney were cut and dressed on site to match the quoin stones we used on the rest of the building and these came from the plinths which formed the bases of the two demolished gate piers that were made from Plymouth limestone. You can see also see the other work we carried out to this gatehouse if you click here.