Details
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SS9512
848-1/6/273
TIVERTON
ST PAUL'S STREET (north side)
Nos.1-17 (Odd)
(Formerly listed as Nos.1-17 (Odd), ST PAUL'S STREET (north side), previously listed as: ST PAUL'S STREET Nos.1 to 17 (odd), Nos.4 to 18 (even))
14/12/72
GV
II
Includes: No.1 St Paul Street WEST-EXE NORTH.
Includes: No.17 St Paul Street CHURCH STREET.
Terrace of nine middle-class houses. Architect unknown to date. The houses were erected in the 1860s by Caroline Brewin, John Heathcoat's daughter, married to Heathcoat's business partner, Ambrose Brewin. The rentals were intended to endow the church of St Paul's, built at the end of the street on a site donated by John Heathcoat. The income from the houses was covenanted to the church.
MATERIALS: Flemish bond yellow brick, rear elevations purple stone rubble with brick dressings; natural slate roofs; cast-iron window sills, probably made in the Heathcoat foundry; stacks with brick shafts and tapering yellow chimney-pots; cast-iron rainwater goods with downpipes recessed in chases in the front wall.
PLAN: one of two terraces, lining St Paul Street and conceived architecturally as a sight-line to St Paul's Church, which stands at the west end of the street. Nos 1 and 17 have attractive, recessed, rounded corners, echoed in the rounded corners of the slate roofs. Each house is double-fronted with end stacks and a central entrance. The original plan was two principal front rooms with a central passage, originally ending in the stair; rear left kitchen, rear right scullery and pantry; rear courtyard bounded by stone rubble wall contains laundry and lavatory. The end houses, Nos 1 and 17, are entered on the returns in St Paul's Square and West Exe North, respectively. No.1 is a shop.
EXTERIOR: two storeys and attic. Each house has a symmetrical three-bay front with deep boxed eaves and a central, recessed, round-headed doorway with a rusticated surround and incised Greek key on the doorcase. Four-panel door with fanlight with spoke glazing bars. Outer windows are sixteen-pane hornless sashes, the central first-floor window is a twelve-pane sash. Original attic dormers, two to each house, are gabled with slate-hung sides, plain bargeboards and glazed with two-light casements, two
panes per light. The rear elevation of the terrace preserves most of the original sixteen-pane sashes. There have been some rear additions, mostly quite modest in scale. Nos.1 and 17 each have a pilastered Doric doorcase with cornice and deep three-pane overlight. Four-panel doors match the others on the terrace, all windows are sixteen-pane sashes. No.1 has a shop front wrapping round the corner. This might be original or later C19. It has end pilasters, reeded below, with sunk panels above and robustly-moulded console brackets. The deep fascia has a moulded cornice. There are two-light plate glass shop windows on either side of a recessed porch. The lights of the windows are divided by slender mullions, the outer standards with capitals and wrought-iron spandrels. The roof of the recessed porch is supported on fluted cast-iron columns. Two-leaf C20 shop door with deep overlight with upper rounded corners.
INTERIOR: Nos 15 and 11 inspected. Both preserve original polished limestone chimney-pieces and original panelled doors. No.11 is remarkably intact throughout with original low cupboards on either side of the fireplace, a stick baluster stair with mahogany handrail, and the original scullery and pantry, as well as the laundry and lavatory in the pitched stone rear yard.
HISTORY: these houses have sometimes been confused with Heathcoat's industrial housing for lace makers and other works in Tiverton. Visually they are connected to the industrial housing as relatively plain, although very late versions of the simple Georgian style favoured by Heathcoat, and they do have the cast-iron window sills that characterise many of the factory-workers' housing, and which were probably made in the Heathcoat foundry. Brayshay, however, reports that there is no evidence in the census returns that they were ever tenanted by lace-workers and describes them as "a small middle-class enclave in the midst of an essentially working class district".
Listing NGR: SS9518312558
