Wistaria Cottage, St Georges Cottage and The Old Post Office

Wistaria Cottage, St Georges Cottage and The Old Post Office

Three cottages built circa 1870–1880, constructed of partly exposed rubble, partly plastered rubble, and partly brick (now whitewashed), with stone rubble stacks and plastered rubble chimney shafts, and red tile roof.

The cottages form a row facing north-east, backing onto the churchyard, with irregular plans deliberately designed to appear as though built in different periods. Wistaria Cottage at the south-east end is two rooms deep with a door in the left gable end and an axial stack in the party wall. St Georges Cottage comprises an entrance lobby and a large room, sharing an axial stack in its party wall with The Old Post Office. The Old Post Office has a two-room plan with an end stack in its north-western room.

Two storeys, styled as Tudor Gothic cottages ornée with largely original irregular frontage. Windows throughout have heavy shoulder-headed timber frames containing casements with glazing bars and timber ovolo-moulded hoods. Door frames are similar in style, with sunken spandrels.

The stone front of Wistaria Cottage features an original single-light window on each floor and an inserted 20th-century casement on the first floor right. St Georges Cottage and the adjoining half of The Old Post Office share a unified original front comprising three ground-floor single-light windows, two first-floor gabled half-dormers with single light to right and two lights to left, a doorway to the right of centre, and a recessed niche above with hoodmould. The plastered front is enriched with two horizontal bands and a cornice of ornamental sgraffito plasterwork, using buff, blue-grey, and red plaster to pick out both floral and geometric patterns. The shoulder-headed niche includes an attractive heraldic achievement in sgraffito plasterwork. This section and Wistaria Cottage have a continuous gable-ended roof with large plastered chimney shafts with soffit-moulded coping. The right end comprises a brick pilaster buttress, with the right end room of The Old Post Office having a brick front. This room includes an original doorway with a 20th-century curving bay window to the right, an original first-floor single-light window, a hipped roof leaning against the gable end of the main block, and a plain brick chimney shaft. The left gable end (Wistaria Cottage) has an original doorway and 20th-century casements. The rear elevation is mostly exposed rubble with 20th-century casements, though two original windows to St Georges Cottage remain.

These cottages are notable for the revival of ornamental sgraffito plasterwork. They were built by William Theodore Acland Radford, who was squire, parson, patron, and incumbent, and also a founder member of the Exeter Diocesan Architectural Society. Radford had a keen interest in surface treatment and championed a sgraffito plasterwork revival; this is the only known 19th-century domestic example of this technique in Devon.