9-12, HIGH STREET

Nos. 9-12 on High Street in Barnstaple are shops and a bank with accommodation and/or offices above, built between 1865 and 1875. The High Street side has a stucco finish, while the Church Lane side features Flemish bond yellow brick and a slate roof, with stacks not visible from the street. The building is designed in the Italianate style and has a deep plan on a corner site between Church Lane and High Street.

It stands three storeys tall with a seven-bay elevation on High Street, plus a corner bay that is bowed on the ground and first floors but canted on the second floor. The structure includes rusticated, chamfered quoins, an enriched eaves treatment with cresting, and an elaborate corbelled cornice with modillions and a dentil frieze above an eaves band. The ground floor treatment varies, but the architectural details above are well preserved.

No. 12 features a late 19th century or early 20th century shop front with a deep cornice above the fascia, consoles at the bowed corner bay, and canted plate-glass windows with moulded standards facing High Street. The bank has a likely early 20th century front with two composite sandstone columns and a rusticated doorway to the right, topped with a projecting cornice above the fascia. No. 9 has a late 20th century shopfront.

The first-floor windows are tall 12-pane sashes, some of which are horned replacements, and have eared, shouldered architraves with alternating semicircular and triangular pediments. The corner bay features a tripartite, pilastered bow window with a moulded cornice and cill. Second-floor windows have eared architraves and corbelled cills, glazed with 3 over 6-pane sashes. There are flat-roofed dormers, and the left return to Church Lane has one over one-pane sashes arranged in pairs and threes. The interior has not been inspected but may retain interesting features. This building occupies a prominent corner site in the High Street.