Details
BARNSTAPLE
SS5533SE BOUTPORT STREET
684-1/7/30 (East side)
31/12/73 No.21
(Formerly Listed as:
BOUTPORT STREET
(East side)
Nos.21 & 22)
GV II
House, now offices. Early C19. Solid rendered walls. Slated
roofs, the main building with 2 hipped spans at right-angles
to street. 2 old red brick chimneys on left side wall. 2 rooms
wide, 2 rooms deep, with main and service stairs in centre;
lower rear service wing to right. Ground-floor plan is
unusual, with what looks like offices, perhaps for a doctor,
at the front. Off-centre entrance passage with large room to
right, 2 narrow rooms to left, the front one with doorways to
passage, rear room and side street. Passage from main stair
hall to back door; plain rear room to right perhaps the former
kitchen.
2 storeys with garret. 4-window range. Round-arched doorway in
place of second ground-storey window from left; 6-panelled
door, the 2 bottom panels flush; matching reveals, fanlight
with radial bars, an anthemion at its base; panelled flanking
pilasters supporting triangular pediment; 3 worn stone steps
with enriched shoescraper at each side. Windows have 6-paned
sashes, except that the lower ground-storey sashes now have no
glazing bars. Whole front flanked by giant pilasters
supporting top cornice and parapet.
Left side wall (facing Vicarage Street) has plain doorway (now
a window) to right of front section and an original window to
left; 2 windows above them in upper storey; all windows have
6-paned sashes, except that the lower ground storey sash now
has no glazing bars. Tall, round-arched stair window in
centre; small-paned sashes with radial bars in the head. No
window in rear section.
Rear wall has 6-panelled back door, the 2 bottom panels flush;
6-paned fanlight with margin-panes. To right, a canted bay
window with 3-light French window, each light with 3 panes and
margin-panes; matching 1-pane transom lights. Ground-storey
window to left has 8-paned sashes. 2 upper-storey windows with
6-paned sashes, flanking a smaller one with 4-paned sashes.
Rear wing has 3 ground-storey windows, all having sashes with
6 over 9 panes and horns; late C20 half-glazed door to right;
upper storey has 2 windows with box-framed, 6-paned sashes
flanking a blind centre window.
INTERIOR: very well preserved, except that only 2
chimneypieces have survived. Entrance passage has 3 small
groin-vaulted ceilings; also 2 round arches with panelled
soffits springing from panelled pilasters. Large stairhall
with enriched modillioned cornices on both floors. Wooden
geometrical stair with thin square balusters and shaped
tread-ends, the balustrade voluted at the bottom. The back
stair, which rises to the garret, is a wooden open-well with
moulded nosings to the treads, thin square balusters and
handrail ramped up over column-newels.
Except for the supposed former kitchen, principal rooms have
6-panelled doors, moulded skirtings, panelled shutters and
moulded or enriched cornices. Right-hand front ground-floor
room has painted stone chimneypiece with paired flanking
pilasters; enriched cornice and ceiling-band. To left the
small front room has only a moulded cornice while the room of
similar size behind it has a heavily enriched cornice,
together with a window set high up, so that it cannot easily
be looked through. Rear left ground-storey room has enriched
cornice and ceiling band moulded with vines.
Upper-floor landing has at each end a lobby to the front and
back rooms, entered through round arches springing from
pilasters; soffits of arches and sides of pilasters decorated
with key pattern; lobbies have modillioned cornices. At the
front, 2 rooms now combined, that to right L-shaped, that to
left shallower with a small room behind it. Rear left-hand
room has enriched cornice. Right-hand garret has fireplace
with moulded architrave and basket grate. Roof timbers
original with through-purlins. Service wing not inspected.
(Lamplugh L: Barnstaple: 1983-: 118-19; White W: Directory of
Devon: 1850-: 580).
Listing NGR: SS5590433406