Details
ST OO NE KENTISBEARE THE SQUARE, Kentisbeare
8/117 The Village Shop and The Old Forge
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II
Two dwellings and shop. Probably early C16, with later alterations and extensions.
Roughcast cob and stone; gable end asbestos slate roof. The building forms overall
an L-shaped plan. Range A facing the Square (the Post Office and the Old Forge) was
originally a 3-room, through-passage plan house, the service end probably to the
right of the now dismantled passage, and now The Old Forge (not examined
internally). The hall and passage, together occupying a little more than one bay,
were open to the roof, and divided from the inner room by a closed jointed cruck
truss, and from the service end by a partition that rises the full height of the
house, and independent of the other jointed cruck truss over the hall. Range A is
connected to Range B which faces Fore Street; the original plan of Range B is
iretrievable, but it is possible that the remains of a full-height partition, a
fragment of which is smoke-blackened on the side facing away from Range A, marks the
division between the hall and a very small inner room of an adjacent property. The
building occupies a site - at the centre of the late medieval proto-borough of
Kentisbeare, similar to that of nos. 2-12, Fore Street, Silverton (discussed in
Proc. Devon Arch. Soc., 40, 1982), and it may represent the remains of a block of
several separate dwellings. Service end heated by end stack; hall by axial stack
which probably backed onto the passage. 2 storeys.
Exterior Front (to the Square): 4-window range. First floor windows all 3-light
casements, that above the Post Office with 6 leaded panes to the outer (fixed)
lights, and a pegged frame. 3-light early C19 casement windows to the ground floor
of The Forge; 2 C20 shopwindows to the Post Office, that to the corner canted, but
between these are attractive double doors, panelled below, and with patterned
glazing bars above, probably early C19. Elevation to Fore Street, a 3 window range,
all 3-light casement windows to first floor with 8 leaded panes per light. 2 taller
C19 3-light casement windows to the left of the doorway, which stands beneath a
porch on brackets. Left-hand end stack.
Interior:inner room and hall are now one shop, a conversion effected in the C19, the
cross beam supported by an iron pier. Inner room with chamfered axial beam with
run-out stops; hall with a similar ceiling beam with scroll stops, with a bracket at
the higher end. Range B has a window stair opposite the present entrance, and to
the rear of the putative hall of that building.
Roof: 2 jointed crucks with Alcock F2 apex carpentry; the higher end truss and the
partition at the lower end (described above) are sooted to the hall side only. The
trenched purlins continue into the service end. Range B has been re-roofed with
collar rafter trusses,crossed and pegged at apex, and probably C18.
Listing NGR: ST0684908185
