Summary
Built as a merchant's town house, C17.
Reasons for Designation
8 Fore Street is listed at Grade II* for the following principal reasons:
Architectural interest:
* a C17 vernacular building of high status, retaining good-quality joinery enriched with decorative mouldings, and leaded glass to the principal elevation;
* retaining a good proportion of historic fabric internally, including moulded joinery and stair, with a legible historic plan form.
Historic interest:
* a good example of a C17 Devon merchant’s house.
Group value:
* one of a number of historic listed merchant’s houses that survive on the town’s principal street.
History
8 Fore Street is an important and intact survival of a C17 Devon merchant's townhouse.
Details
Built as a merchant's town house, C17.
MATERIALS: half-timbered, with cob and stone mix to side and rear, plastered, under gabled-end slate roof, and abutting the property to the left.
PLAN: L-shaped plan, with rear wing. There is a one-room deep main range facing the street. The house appears to conform to the merchant-house plan type with a shop and storage area on the ground floor, and main rooms on the first floor.
EXTERIOR: a main range of three storeys, with a rear wing of two. Three window range. There is a left-hand end chimney stack and another at the junction of the main range and wing, both with brick shafts. Except for the altered ground floor, the front is a symmetrical C17 range. In the C19 the ground floor was refaced under a slated pentice. The left-hand side is brought out and has a two-light window with nine panes per light. To the right-hand side, the pentice is coved and there is a two-light hornless sash window. There is a vehicular entrance to the centre.
The two upper floors have exposed close studding and a horizontal bar running between the windows, with dentils to the first-floor bar, and a convex moulding to the second floor. The studding below the first-floor coving takes the form of Ionic pilasters and is broken by two six-light windows, brought out slightly on brackets, with eighteen leaded panes per light. The jambs and mullions are either chamfered or with ovolo moulding. Some crown glass survives. The upper part of the first floor has plaster coving concealing the jetty, with the division between the two storeys marked by a decorative, dentilled frieze. The horizontal rail to the second floor is broken by three three-light casement windows, with lintels at eaves level. The lights to the central window are of twenty panes, whilst those to left and right are thirty panes to each light, the side lights also being fixed. There is a dentilled band (possibly later) below the sills. The right-hand side elevation has no windows. To the rear, there is one two-light chamfered window, with sixteen leaded panes per light, and a single-light window above vehicular entrance with ovolo moulded surround.
INTERIOR: the first floor consists of two rooms with two ovolo-moulded axial beams, ovolo-moulded mullions, and one large internal upright support to each window. There is a newel staircase to the rear with an octagonal newel and moulded finial. The attic has original floorboards, two door frames, and post-and-wattle internal partitions. The roof, of three bays, has purlins trenched into principals, however, the apex carpentry is not visible.
