12-22 AND 26, CHURCH STREET

Terrace of seven houses forming part of a larger block that includes Nos 2-4 St Paul's Square and No. 26 Church Street in Tiverton. Probably built in the 1860s or 1870s, they are similar in character to the St Paul Street houses of the late 1850s and were constructed by the Heathcoat family for workers at their silk and lace mills. They appear sketched on Heathcoat's estate atlas of 1844 as a later addition and may have been built by 1861, although comparable Heathcoat houses nearby appear to date from as late as 1875-6.

The houses are built to a double-depth plan with double-fronted aspect. No. 12 features a corner shop, probably original, on Wellbrook Street. All are two storeys with three-window fronts and centre doorways, except No. 12 which has a one-window return front to Wellbrook Street.

Materials consist of pinkish-yellow brick laid in Flemish bond with occasional extra headers, set on a low chamfered plinth of squared stone blocks. All openings have flat gauged arches except for a round-arched passage entrance between Nos 22 and 26. Windows are fitted with cast-iron sills and have sash windows with glazing-bars, mostly 8-paned except for 6-paned windows in the middle second-storey positions. Roofs are slated.

The doorways have deep reveals with wood panels on each side and soffit of arch, all decorated with incised Greek ornament. Doors are 4-panelled with the two lower panels flush. The original fanlights are 3-paned; that at No. 22 has coloured glass fitted behind clear glass at the front. Some original features have been lost: Nos 14 and 22 now have twentieth-century wooden doors, and at No. 14 the original fanlight and incised panels have been removed. The passage entrance has a plank door, probably twentieth-century.

The shop front at No. 12 features display windows to both Church Street and Wellbrook Street with a doorway on the splayed corner, flanked by Doric pilasters supporting an entablature. The Church Street display window is 4-paned with vertical glazing-bars; towards Wellbrook Street a similar arrangement exists but the panes appear removable with transom-lights above containing decorated cast-iron grilles. The shop door is glazed with a solid moulded panel at the bottom. The brickwork on the corner above the shop is rounded and recessed, matching a similar feature on No. 26 Church Street at the opposite end of the block.

Chimneys are mostly rebuilt in similar style to earlier examples, but the original chimney on the party-wall between Nos 12 and 14 is of pinkish-yellow brick with projecting brick-courses at the top forming an entablature with modillioned cornice. All chimneys have good 6-sided pots. A deeply-projecting moulded eaves-cornice runs across the frontage. Rainwater pipes are recessed into the brickwork. A series of patterned iron ventilator-grilles are set into the stone plinth. A shaped cast-iron plaque inscribed CHURCH ST is attached to the brickwork above the shop front.

These houses form part of a well-preserved group of artisan housing in Church Street, notable for their external completeness as part of a planned development that included an Anglican Church, institute, and school associated with the Heathcoat family's industrial enterprise.