The sketch of the old Fallapit House is shown on the map of East Allington, South Devon. drawn about 1600. The current house is a 19th-century rebuilding of earlier mansion, and occupies a site to the north-west of the village, on an eastward-facing hillside above a lake and stream in the valley bottom. After passing into institutional use during the mid to late 20th century the house became derelict in the 1990s and subsequently suffered from vandalism and neglect. It was restored at the beginning of the 21st century and the site developed
Edmund Prideaux’s drawing of Fallapit House in 1727
The rebuilt house was a large and handsome mansion, in the Elizabethan style, erected about 1815, near the old one, an ivy mantled portion of which still remains. The house was enlarged in 1849, and is pleasantly situated in the midst of extensive and tasteful pleasure grounds. Fallapit was an ancient seat of a family of its own name, whose heiress Margaret de Fallapit married Sir Henry Fortescue of Wood, Lord Chief Justice of the Common Pleas in Ireland. She was his second wife, and their descendants in the male line resided here above 300 years. Sir Edmund Fortescue was created a baronet in 1644, but the title became extinct on the death of his son, in 1683. The estate then passed to a younger branch, which became extinct in 1734, by the death of Edmund Fortescue, Esq., whose daughter married Thomas Bury, Esq., whose heiress carried the estate in marriage to the Reverend Nathaniel Wells, whose eldest son took the name of Fortescue and so continued the line.
View from Lake 1900
Fallapit in snow about 1900
Photograph from the Sale Catalogue 1926
Fallapit House before the Restoration and Redevelopment into classic style homes.
FALLAPIT CHURCH (St ANDREWS)
Grave of John and Owner Fortescue 1525
Tomb of Sarah Fortescue. There are two other similar tombs adjacent.
Pulpit in East Allington Church
Plaque with possible explanation of the Coats of Arms around the Pulpit