38 and 38a Gold Street, Radford Cottage 2c Barrington Street and 2b Barrington Street

This is a mid-19th century building consisting of two shops with living accommodation above, located at 38 and 38A Gold Street, Radford Cottage 2C Barrington Street, and 2B Barrington Street in Tiverton. The shop fronts were re-faced in 1901. The building has a solid, rendered facade and a slated roof, with red brick chimneys on each end wall, the tops of which have been rebuilt.

The building is three storeys high, with two widely spaced windows. The ground floor features a pair of wooden shop fronts, designed as a single unit. Each end and the central section has a pilaster strip with a shaped panel, supporting a bracket topped with a shaped block and an acorn finial. An entablature with a dentilled cornice runs between the brackets. The end pilasters are panelled on their outer sides, and the brackets are carved with the monogram HT, the date 1901, and are presumably commemorative. Each shop has a single display window alongside a doorway, situated centrally between the pilaster strips. A late 20th-century replacement window is located on the right-hand side. A wooden, panelled partition is positioned between the two shops at the front. The upper storeys feature matching pilaster strips to those on the shop fronts.

The second-floor windows are wooden canted bay windows with swept pent roofs. Pilasters are positioned between and flanking the windows, and cornices are above the bays; the left-hand bay’s cornice is dentilled and overlaps the pilasters. The original arrangement on the right-hand window was likely similar. The third-floor windows are plain. All upper-floor windows have two-paned sashes with a single vertical glazing bar, with the exception of the side sashes of the bays, which are plain. The interior of the building was not inspected during assessment.

Directory records indicate the building was originally a single shop. In 1902, Francis Snow, a grocer, occupied the premises, followed by Mrs Victoria Radford, a milliner, in 1908. William Hubert Thorne, also a grocer, occupied the adjacent property (number 40) at both times, though there is no evidence to suggest he was responsible for the shop front’s construction.