Oldway Mansion

Oldway Mansion is a large house and gardens in Paignton, Devon, England. It was built as a private residence for Isaac Singer , and rebuilt by his son Paris Singer in the style of the Palace of Versailles.

Around 1871, the Fernham estate in Paignton was purchased by Isaac Singer, the founder of the Singer Sewing Machine Company. The old buildings on the site were demolished and he commissioned a local architect, George Soudon Bridgman, to build a new mansion as his home. As part of the designs, Singer instructed Bridgman to build a theatre within the house. Bridgman was at that time being apprenticed by a young Frank Matcham, who had just returned from London where he had been studying architecture in a surveyors office. In an edition of The Builder, dated 1873, Matcham was named in the request for tender section as being the accepted party to work alongside Bridgman on the Oldway Mansion project. The architectural historian Gorel Garlick considers it entirely possible that Matcham was given sole responsibility by Bridgman for the theatre's design because of his educational experiences in London. Singer spared no cost in terms of Oldway Mansion's construction; he sourced the finest materials from around the world and instructed Bridgman to design the interior in exuberant French style. Garlick notes that it was highly likely that Singer's exuberance would have influenced someone as architecturally impressionable as Matcham, whose later theatres used such extravagant decoration. The work was completed in 1873 Singer died on 23 July 1875, shortly before work on the original mansion was completed.

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