St Michaels Close

St Michaels Close, Otterton

Four adjoining cottage almshouses built on the site of a dissolved monastery, originally forming a former manor house. The building dates to the early or mid 16th century with some 18th-century improvements, but was radically altered and rearranged in the late 19th century and again around 1970.

The structure is built of roughly-squared stone blocks, predominantly local conglomerate sandstone with some other sandstones and volcanic trap. Beerstone ashlar is used for decorative detail. The original stone rubble walls support brick chimneys topped with late 19th-century brick, and the roof is of slate.

The four cottages are arranged as a continuous block facing west. Nos. 1 and 2 occupy the left (northern) end, each one room wide and two rooms deep with an axial chimney stack between them. Nos. 3 and 4 are two-room plan cottages served by an axial stack and two gable-end stacks at the right (southern) end. No. 3 occupies the front rooms and is entered through a two-storey porch positioned slightly right of centre. No. 4 occupies the rear rooms and is accessed from the back.

The west front displays a 2:1:3-window arrangement. Nos. 1 and 2 to the left of the porch each have one window, both circa 1970 casements without glazing bars and with concrete lintels. Contemporary part-glazed doors occupy either end of this section. The masonry here is random rubble, heavily disturbed during the 19th and 20th centuries.

The porch is a notable architectural feature. Its outer arch is a richly-moulded Beerstone four-centred arch with a moulded cornice inside. Directly above the outer arch is a Beerstone plaque set between pilasters and below a moulded entablature. This contains a heraldic achievement in bas relief displaying the arms of William Duke (mayor of Exeter in 1460) quartered with those of Cecily Poer. Above the plaque is a 20th-century mullion-and-transom window set under a probably 18th-century Beerstone flat arch with keystone. Blocked windows flank the porch, and in the angle between the porch and main block on the right is what appears to be part of a disused first-floor chimney stack.

The three-window section to the right of the porch contains 16th-century two- and three-light limestone windows with three-centred heads to the lights and sunken spandrels. The ground floor centre and right windows are timber casements with flat-faced mullions, possibly dating to as early as the 18th century. All contain timber casements and rectangular panes of leaded glass.

The roof is gable-ended. All gables, including that of the porch, have shaped kneelers, coping and stone finials.

The north end, overlooking Otterton village, contains blocked windows on each floor: a massive four-light mullion-and-transom window to the ground floor and a two-light first-floor window. All lights have three-centred heads with sunken spandrels and both windows have hoodmoulds. These windows appear 16th-century in style but are constructed of different limestone to those on the main front.

The rear elevation is plastered and contains only circa 1970 fenestration. The right (southern) end is blind, though the lower section of the rear chimney shaft is limestone ashlar.

Interior features are sparse, with nothing earlier than the late 19th century and most detail dating from circa 1970. The roof is not accessible but is believed to date from the late 19th or 20th century. Some early features may survive behind later plaster, and local tradition records a blocked cellar beneath the south end with stone doorways.

The heraldic arms appear to date from the late 15th century, but the building is thought to have been erected after the dissolution of the monastery in the 16th century. The surviving architectural detail supports a 16th-century rather than 15th-century date.