Close Court And The Close And Attached Garden Wall

Close Court and The Close is a house, divided into two, with an attached garden wall, located on Eddy's Lane in Newport, Barnstaple. It dates from around 1800 and is a remodelling of an earlier building. The structure is rendered, partly cob, with some stone rubble, and features a slate roof that is gabled at both ends. The chimney stacks have brick shafts with corbelled cornices and some old terracotta chimney pots, along with crested ridge-tiles.

The house has a double-depth plan, with the main range consisting of three rooms wide and a cross passage to the right of the center (in The Close) where the stair rises to the rear. Both ends of the house have been extended under lower roofs; the right end extension serves as service rooms for The Close, while the left-hand room has become a separate house known as Close Court, which extends into a lower-roofed range to the left.

The building is two storeys high and features an asymmetrical window arrangement of three windows on the left and one on the right facing Eddy's Lane. The main roof is gable-ended, and the two-storey addition on the right has a lower hipped roof with a lean-to addition at the right end. There is a small front projection to The Close with a lean-to porch that has an entrance on the right return. The ground floor includes two 12-pane sash windows and one sash window in the hipped section, while the first floor has three 12-pane sashes and a large stair sash with eight over twelve panes. Close Court features a six-panel door with 20th-century gabled porch hoods.

Inside, The Close retains 19th-century joinery, with the two left-hand rooms divided by a segmental-headed archway. There is a good stick baluster stair with a ramped, wreathed handrail. The roof consists of tie beam trusses and principal rafters halved at the apex, likely dating from the late 18th to early 19th century. The brick stacks appear to be integrated into the cob walls. Close Court was not inspected.

Historically, the house is said to have been called Manor Pound at one time. The garden wall to the right is rendered and features a two-centred arched doorway leading into the garden.