Qualla: Plympton House

Plympton House: Introduction

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit (Lobsterthermidor (talk) 16:56, 19 June 2014 (UTC)), Public domain. In 1844, an inspector from the Metropolitan Commissioners in Lunacy walked through the outbuildings behind Plympton House and recorded what he saw. Sixty-six pauper patients were confined there in squalor, packed into farm sheds and converted outhouses. Some of the seventeen private patients fared little better. Meanwhile in the main building, a Portland-stone William-and-Mary mansion built between 1700 and 1720 for one of the most distinguished judges in England, the proprietor and his family lived in considerable comfort. The inspector's notes were carefully diplomatic but the picture was clear. A house designed as the seat of a Lord Chief Justice had become a profitable Victorian asylum, and the architectural splendour was now a backdrop for industrial-scale neglect. This was Plympton House's second life. There would be more.

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Image: (Lobsterthermidor (talk) 16:56, 19 June 2014 (UTC)) | Public domain

Plympton House: The Lord Chief Justice

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Nilfanion, CC BY-SA 3.0. Sir George Treby was baptised at Plympton St Mary in 1643, the son of Peter Treby "Gent." He went up to Exeter College Oxford, read law at Middle Temple, and was called to the Bar in 1671. Within five years he was Member of Parliament for Plympton, knighted by 1680, and then brie...

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Image: Nilfanion | CC BY-SA 3.0

Plympton House: The Treby Inheritance

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit School of Godfrey Kneller, Public domain. Sir George's son, also called George Treby, completed the house around 1720, working with a mason named William Veale whose name appears in the accounts but whose role is unclear. The architect is unknown. The result is a compact two-storey Portland-stone mansion above a basement...

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Image: School of Godfrey Kneller | Public domain

Plympton House: The Asylum Decades

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Plym678, CC BY-SA 4.0. Around the same time, a Dr Duck took a tenancy and began the institution that would define Plympton House for the next century. The asylum operated on a clear hierarchy. The proprietor and his family occupied the main mansion in some style. The pauper patients, sixty-six of them ...

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Image: Plym678 | CC BY-SA 4.0

Plympton House: The Sisters of St Augustine

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Plym678, CC BY-SA 4.0. In 1934, the Sisters of St Augustine acquired Plympton House and established St Peter's Convent, a home for the mentally ill. The intention was charitable and the operation grew steadily over the following decades. By the late twentieth century the original house had been substan...

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Image: Plym678 | CC BY-SA 4.0

Plympton House: Fourteen Luxury Houses

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit N Chadwick, CC BY-SA 2.0. By 2015 Plympton House was empty again, watched only by security guards employed to keep it from being squatted or vandalised. On 31 May 2016, Plymouth City Council granted planning permission for conversion to residential use, and a development scheme launched offering fourteen ...

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Image: N Chadwick | CC BY-SA 2.0