The Village Shop And The Old Forge

ST OO NE KENTISBEARE THE SQUARE, Kentisbeare 8/117 The Village Shop and The Old Forge - II Two dwellings and shop. Probably early C16, with later alterations and extensions. Roughcast cob and stone; gable end asbestos slate roof. The building forms overall an L-shaped plan. Range A facing the Square (the Post Office and the Old Forge) was originally a 3-room, through-passage plan house, the service end probably to the right of the now dismantled passage, and now The Old Forge (not examined internally). The hall and passage, together occupying a little more than one bay, were open to the roof, and divided from the inner room by a closed jointed cruck truss, and from the service end by a partition that rises the full height of the house, and independent of the other jointed cruck truss over the hall. Range A is connected to Range B which faces Fore Street; the original plan of Range B is iretrievable, but it is possible that the remains of a full-height partition, a fragment of which is smoke-blackened on the side facing away from Range A, marks the division between the hall and a very small inner room of an adjacent property. The building occupies a site - at the centre of the late medieval proto-borough of Kentisbeare, similar to that of nos. 2-12, Fore Street, Silverton (discussed in Proc. Devon Arch. Soc., 40, 1982), and it may represent the remains of a block of several separate dwellings. Service end heated by end stack; hall by axial stack which probably backed onto the passage. 2 storeys. Exterior Front (to the Square): 4-window range. First floor windows all 3-light casements, that above the Post Office with 6 leaded panes to the outer (fixed) lights, and a pegged frame. 3-light early C19 casement windows to the ground floor of The Forge; 2 C20 shopwindows to the Post Office, that to the corner canted, but between these are attractive double doors, panelled below, and with patterned glazing bars above, probably early C19. Elevation to Fore Street, a 3 window range, all 3-light casement windows to first floor with 8 leaded panes per light. 2 taller C19 3-light casement windows to the left of the doorway, which stands beneath a porch on brackets. Left-hand end stack. Interior:inner room and hall are now one shop, a conversion effected in the C19, the cross beam supported by an iron pier. Inner room with chamfered axial beam with run-out stops; hall with a similar ceiling beam with scroll stops, with a bracket at the higher end. Range B has a window stair opposite the present entrance, and to the rear of the putative hall of that building. Roof: 2 jointed crucks with Alcock F2 apex carpentry; the higher end truss and the partition at the lower end (described above) are sooted to the hall side only. The trenched purlins continue into the service end. Range B has been re-roofed with collar rafter trusses,crossed and pegged at apex, and probably C18.

Listing NGR: ST0684908185