1-17 St Paul Street

Terrace of nine middle-class houses at 1-17 St Paul Street, Tiverton, erected in the 1860s. The architect is unknown to date. The houses were built by Caroline Brewin, daughter of John Heathcoat and wife of Heathcoat's business partner Ambrose Brewin. The rental income was covenanted to endow the church of St Paul's, which stands at the west end of the street on a site donated by John Heathcoat. The terrace forms one of two lines of houses conceived architecturally as a sight-line to St Paul's Church.

The terrace is built in Flemish bond yellow brick, with rear elevations in purple stone rubble with brick dressings. The roofs are natural slate. Window sills are cast iron, probably made in the Heathcoat foundry. Chimneys have brick shafts and tapering yellow chimney-pots. Rainwater goods are cast iron with downpipes recessed in chases in the front wall.

The buildings are two storeys with attic. Each of the nine houses is double-fronted with end stacks and a central entrance. Externally, each has a symmetrical three-bay front with deep boxed eaves. The central doorway is recessed and round-headed with a rusticated surround and incised Greek key on the doorcase. Doors are four-panelled with fanlights with spoke glazing bars. Outer windows are sixteen-pane hornless sashes; the central first-floor window is a twelve-pane sash. Attic dormers, two to each house, are gabled with slate-hung sides, plain bargeboards and glazed with two-light casements of two panes per light. The rear elevation preserves most of the original sixteen-pane sashes.

Nos.1 and 17, the end houses, have distinctive recessed rounded corners echoed in the rounded corners of the slate roofs. Both are entered on the returns in St Paul's Square and West Exe North respectively. Each has a pilastered Doric doorcase with cornice and deep three-pane overlight; four-panel doors and sixteen-pane sash windows throughout. No.1 is a shop with a front wrapping around the corner, either original or dating to the later 19th century. It has end pilasters, reeded below with sunk panels above, and robustly moulded console brackets. The fascia has a moulded cornice. Two-light plate glass shop windows flank a recessed porch, with slender mullions dividing the lights and outer standards with capitals and wrought-iron spandrels. The porch roof is supported on fluted cast-iron columns. The shop door is a two-leaf 20th-century addition with deep overlight with upper rounded corners.

The original plan comprised two principal front rooms with a central passage originally ending in the stair; rear left kitchen, rear right scullery and pantry; and a rear courtyard bounded by a stone rubble wall containing laundry and lavatory. There have been some rear additions, mostly modest in scale.

Interior inspection of Nos.15 and 11 reveals that both preserve original polished limestone chimney-pieces and original panelled doors. No.11 is remarkably intact throughout, retaining original low cupboards on either side of the fireplace, a stick baluster stair with mahogany handrail, and original scullery and pantry, as well as the laundry and lavatory in the pitched stone rear yard.

These houses have sometimes been confused with Heathcoat's industrial housing for lace makers and other workers in Tiverton. They are connected visually to that industrial housing as relatively plain, although very late versions of the simple Georgian style favoured by Heathcoat, and share the cast-iron window sills that characterise much of the factory-workers' housing, probably made in the Heathcoat foundry. However, census returns provide no evidence that they were ever tenanted by lace-workers. They are described as "a small middle-class enclave in the midst of an essentially working class district".