5-27, Exeter Street

A terrace of 23 cottages dating back to 1843, built for the Great Western Railway Company. The construction used coursed limestone rubble with slate roofs and features four brick stacks on the party walls. The cottages are two storeys high, with Nos. 5-9 having two bays each, and Nos. 10-28 having a single bay with a side passage. Each cottage has two rooms, with a lean-to staircase at the rear. Later additions, from the 20th century, are present in the walled rear yards. The ground floor windows have segmental arches made of painted brick and contain twelve-pane casements within deep painted reveals. Doors are inset and splayed, with fifteen-pane lights to the left room of the double-bayed units. Upper floor windows are four-pane casements, all with stone sills. The rear yard walls are built with red brick and have blue, hog-back copings and boarded gates. The appearance is similar to that of 1-23 Taunton Street. The cottages underwent extensive renovation around 1974. These cottages were part of a larger village designed to house workers for the Great Western Railway works, and their construction, originally intended to include 300 cottages by contractors JD & C Rigby, was significantly delayed, with completion extending into the 1850s. British Rail owned the cottages until 1966, when the local authority acquired them and restored the buildings. The village is considered one of Britain’s best-preserved and most ambitious railway settlements.