Elizabethan House Museum

PLYMOUTH

SX4854SW NEW STREET, Barbican 740-1/62/37 (South side) 25/01/54 No.32 Elizabethan House Museum (Formerly Listed as: NEW STREET, Plymouth No.32 (Elizabethan House Museum))

GV II*

Merchant's house. Probably very early C17, restored in the 1926 by AS Parker. MATERIALS: render on timber frame to jettied front with slate-roofed jetties, painted rubble side wall on the right with evidence for former adjoining house, slatehanging to visible left-hand return, presumably originally with a rubble side wall also, but altered early C19 when at least the front of No.31 was rebuilt; slatehanging also at rear; steep slate roofs with projecting front gable with moulded pendants; 2 large rubble stacks on the right. PLAN: fairly shallow double-depth plan, with rear stair projection. EXTERIOR: 3 storeys over cellar; 1st floor with windows to full width including central canted 4-light (plus sidelights) mullioned oriel on shaped and carved brackets; similar 3-light oriel to gable above. Ground floor has original heavy moulded doorframe and similar inner doorframe with C20 copy of original panelled door, on the left, and 5-light mullioned window on the right. Original and restored windows with ovolo-moulded mullions and frames. Basement/cellar has iron grills to the squat lights. Rear has stair outshut set back on the right and in the irregular angle between are the mullioned windows lighting the rear room and chambers above and the single-light windows lighting the staircase. INTERIOR: has many original features including: fine moulded muntin and plank screen to right of passage; floor structures with some moulded cross beams with stepped and ogee tongue stops; roof structure with threaded purlins and dovetailed collars; moulded doorframes and moulded planked doors; canted-plan chamfered granite fireplaces with ovolo-moulded oak lintels (copies to ground floor) and floors of beach pebbles laid to herringbone pattern, and newel staircase with original pole (ship's mast) newel and C20 oak treads. There is a fine late C17 painted corner cupboard with moulded outer frame and round-arched niche with panelled pilasters to rear 1st-floor room. Also there are old wide pine floorboards laid over possibly the original floors, and there is the remains of a C19 cloam oven in the fireplace of the rear ground-floor room. New Street contains a high proportion of fine C17 and C18 houses and this is probably the most complete and unaltered example of a jettied merchant's house in Plymouth. (The Buildings of England: Pevsner N: Devon: London: 1989-: 662).

Listing NGR: SX4825354060