Flete House

Flete House is a Grade I listed country house in the parish of Holbeton, in the South Hams district of Devon, England. The gardens are Grade II listed in the National Register of Historic Parks and Gardens.

Flete was a Saxon estate, the manor being held by the Damarell family from the reign of William I until the time of Edward III.

The earliest part of the house dates from the sixteenth century, and was substantially rebuilt around 1620 for Sir Charles Hele. The Hele family held the house until 1716, when the estate passed to the Bulteels. Additions were made to the house in both the early and the late eighteenth century. The house was heavily remodelled in the Gothic style in 1835 by J. C. Bulteel, which obliterated the early and late eighteenth century classical work and added castellations.

In 1878 the architect Richard Norman Shaw undertook extensive building works for Henry Bingham Mildmay, remodelling and extending the house, while retaining the sixteenth/seventeenth-century house to the south-west.

Flete House was used by the City of Plymouth as a maternity hospital during and after the Second World War. At the time the Second World War broke out, the estate was in the hands of Lieutenant-Colonel, the Lord Mildmay of Flete. The first baby to be born at Flete arrived on Monday July 14, 1941, and by the end of 1941 there had been a further 124 births. Lord Mildmay remained in residence at the House until his death in 1947 and was apparently often seen in the wards. Dave Hill of the pop group Slade was one of the babies born at the House.

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