17, Litchdon Street

This is a house, now offices, built in 1821, with alterations made later in the 19th century and in 1925. It has solid, rendered walls and a slate roof with low parapets on the gable ends. The gable ends have red brick chimneys with projecting brick courses and moulded caps forming an entablature. The building is double-fronted and two rooms deep, with a central entrance passage leading to a rear staircase.

It is three storeys high, with a three-window range. The windows have flat heads with moulded architraves and cills, and later sash windows with horns, featuring two upright glazing bars creating margin panes. A round-arched doorway is recessed within a larger round arch and has a moulded architrave. There is a six-panelled door with a knocker, flanked by pilasters, and a plain fanlight. Pilasters are on each end of the front, the one on the right shared with the adjacent property at No. 18. A moulded eaves cornice runs around the building. Several barred sashes are present in the rear wall.

Internally, rooms on the ground floor were noted in 1985 to have moulded cornices, some of which were enriched. An original wooden chimney-piece exists in the right-hand front room. A large segmental-arched opening, then blocked, has a moulded architrave and divides the left-hand front and back rooms. The entrance lobby features a ceiling with a groined plaster vault, containing a small flower in the centre. The passage has a moulded cornice and two doors with six ovolo-moulded panels. The staircase was rebuilt in 1925 by Mr Thorne of Bear Street, using turned balusters in an early Georgian style and Jacobean turned newels. An old cob wall, likely pre-dating the house, was located on the left-hand side of the back garden.

Historically, in 1821, the Corporation leased the sites for Nos. 17 and 18 to Nicholas Glass, who constructed two substantial dwelling houses according to an approved plan and elevation. Philip Hodge, a Barnstaple builder, may have built the entire terrace, as No. 19 had been "lately erected.” The lease included a plan of the house. The Corporation sold the freehold in 1925. The building is part of a formerly uniform terrace, which included Nos. 18, 19, and 20.