10, Cross Street

No. 10 Cross Street in Barnstaple was the Post Office from 1902 to 1984 and is now used as offices. The building is dated 1901 on the dormer gable and is likely designed by FW Petter of Barnstaple. It features a stone ashlar front and pale yellow brick at the rear, topped by a hipped slated roof. There are rendered chimneys with bracketed caps on each side wall. The layout is complex, with a double-depth front range and extensive rear buildings that once housed writing and sorting rooms.

The building is two storeys high with a garret and has a five-bay Italianate façade. The bays are separated by pilasters in Ionic and Corinthian styles. The ground storey features round-arched openings with moulded archivolts that spring from square half-columns, each arch having a prominent keystone. The centre and end bays now contain doorways; the centre bay was originally a window, while the other two had double panelled doors. The remaining two windows still have twisted iron columns.

The upper-storey windows are mullioned and transomed, adorned with moulded architraves and shaped sunk panels below. A cornice at the top is surmounted by a balustrade, which is interrupted in the middle by a large dormer gable flanked by pilasters, buttressed by scrolls, and supporting a curved pediment. On either side, there are wooden dormer windows with steeply pitched triangular pediments.

Inside, according to a description from 1988, there are no notable features except for a kitchen range located in the right-hand (east) garret room at the front. Historically, an important house belonging to the Dodderidge family once occupied this site, and panelling along with an overmantel from 1617 has been preserved and is now in the Guildhall.