4-18, St Paul Street

Terrace of eight middle-class houses on the south side of St Paul Street, Tiverton, built in the 1860s. Number 4 is truncated at its east end, the original Number 2 having been demolished. The architect is unknown. The houses were erected by Caroline Brewin, daughter of John Heathcoat and wife of Heathcoat's business partner Ambrose Brewin. The rentals were intended to endow the church of St Paul's, which stands at the west end of the street on a site donated by John Heathcoat, with the income from the houses covenanted to the church.

The terrace is built in Flemish bond yellow brick with rear elevations of roughcast, probably concealing purple stone rubble with brick dressings matching those on the opposite side of the street. Roofs are natural slate. Cast-iron window sills, probably made in the Heathcoat foundry, are a distinctive feature. Chimney stacks have brick shafts and tapering yellow chimney-pots. Cast-iron rainwater goods with downpipes are recessed in chases in the front wall. Number 4 has had its left end bay knocked off and replaced with a twentieth-century single-storey shop.

The two terraces lining St Paul Street were conceived architecturally as a sight-line to St Paul's Church at the west end of the street. The west end corner is recessed and rounded, though this forms part of the listing for Numbers 35-41 (odd) Church Street. Each house is double-fronted with end stacks and a central entrance. Each house originally had two principal front rooms with a central passage ending in the stair, a rear left kitchen, rear right scullery and pantry, and a rear courtyard bounded by a stone rubble wall containing a laundry and lavatory. The rear service yards and buildings have not been preserved on this side of the street.

The buildings are two storeys with attic. Each house has a symmetrical three-bay front with deep boxed eaves and a central, recessed, round-headed doorway with rusticated surround and incised Greek key on the doorcase. The door is four-panel with a 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 and plain bargeboards, glazed with two-light casements of two panes per light. The rear elevation of the terrace preserves most of the original sixteen-pane sashes.

These houses have sometimes been confused with Heathcoat's industrial housing for lace makers and workers 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 share the cast-iron window sills that characterise many of the factory-workers' housing, probably made in the Heathcoat foundry. However, there is no evidence in the Census Returns that they were ever tenanted by lace-workers, and they are described as "a small middle-class enclave in the midst of an essentially working class district".