Amory House

Amory House

A community centre for elderly people, formerly a private house, built around 1700, situated on the east side of St Peter Street in Tiverton.

The building is constructed of red brick laid in Flemish bond with vitrified headers on the front and back walls. The rusticated quoins and coping of the plinth are painted, likely concealing stone underneath. The door case, string course and eaves cornice are of wood. The right side wall is of plain red brick, refaced in the 19th century except for the gable end. The roof is slated with half-hipped ends on each side. Red brick chimneys rise from each side wall, with the right one (the only one visible from the street) having a rebuilt top.

The building is double-fronted and double-depth in plan. The ground floor front is divided between a two-window room to the right and an entrance hall with staircase to the left, with a small room inserted to the left of the front door. The rear part was originally one long room, now divided into two. A through-passage with a separate street entrance runs along the left side, extending beyond the house as a weatherboarded lean-to that was formerly used as a waiting room for a doctors' surgery added at the rear. A semi-basement contains the former kitchen in the right-hand front room. The first floor and garret have a four-room plan.

Externally, the building is two storeys with a semi-basement and garret, five windows wide. The middle window and front door are set within a slight projection topped by a triangular pediment above the eaves. Rusticated quoins appear at either end of the front and on the centre projection; the rustication at the ends of the ground storey appears to have been cut back. A moulded string course runs above the ground storey. Windows and side doorway in the ground and second storeys have flat gauged arches with double ogee-shaped lower edges. Panelled aprons are positioned below the ground storey windows; the second storey aprons are lugged with exaggerated lugs. The sash windows are flush-framed with 6 panes each, except for two narrower windows to the left of the front door, which have 4-paned sashes. Semi-basement windows have plain segmental arches; the left one is blocked with brick, while the other three retain small-paned, two-light wood casements.

The front door is approached by four steps and has a moulded architrave, pulvinated frieze and prominent swan-necked pediment on consoles. The door itself has six raised and fielded ovolo-moulded panels and is deeply recessed within similarly panelled reveals and soffit. A tracered "cobweb" fanlight, probably inserted in the late 18th or early 19th century, lights the entrance. The side doorway has double doors, each leaf with four ovolo-moulded panels and an eight-paned overlight above. A 19th-century cast-iron shoe-scraper is inset beside each doorway. The deeply coved, moulded eaves cornice breaks forward in four places above the rusticated quoins, with the middle two projections carrying a triangular pediment.

The right return is largely blank, apart from two segmental-headed garret windows with two-light wood casements (two panes per light), the left one widened probably in the 19th century. A moulded wood cornice follows the line of the half-hip above these windows.

The rear wall has an original four-light basement window with lightly-moulded square wood mullions. Ground and second-storey windows feature barred sashes: two triple-sashed windows below and three single-light ones above. A gable dormer contains a two-light, small-paned wood casement.

Internally, the ground floor front room displays raised bolection-moulded panelling and a simple moulded plaster ceiling with an oval centre panel. The hall features ovolo-moulded panelling and shutters, with a segmental arch springing from square columns separating it from the staircase. The wooden staircase rises from the semi-basement to the garret, featuring an open well, closed moulded strings, twisted balusters, a flat moulded handrail, square newels with flat moulded caps and moulded pendants, and a foliated plaster ceiling boss. The first-floor landing has ovolo-moulded panelling and two-panel doors. Some internal partitions have been altered.

Original wooden chimney-pieces are present in the left front and right rear rooms; the latter is bolection-moulded. A carved and moulded early 19th-century door frame is found in the right front room, which also features a Victorian chimney-piece. The garret and front right and rear right rooms contain wooden chimney-pieces with eared, moulded architraves, shaped frieze and moulded cornice. Cupboards preserve what are probably original cock's-head hinges.

The roof timbers are mostly concealed, but the collars have shaped strengthening pieces nailed on in the manner of arch braces. Above the attic floor at collar level, a king post rises from the collar to the apex. The former basement kitchen has a brick floor with the scar of a removed fireplace visible.