7, Cross Street

BARNSTAPLE

SS5533SE CROSS STREET 684-1/7/103 (North side) 19/01/51 No.7

GV II

House and shop, now shop. 1635, remodelled early or mid C18 and later; late C20 addition at rear. Plastered walls of stone and brick, possibly with some timber-framing. Hipped, slated roofs at front ends of front and back blocks; remainder flat roofed. No chimneys visible from street. Gallery and back block plan; front block one room wide and 2 rooms deep, back block one room deep. Front block 3-storeyed with cellar beneath the rear part; back block 2-storeyed. 2-window range, remodelled in early or mid C18. Ground storey altered in late C20. Upper storey windows have eared architraves with triple keyblocks; 6-pane sashes, except that the upper sashes of the smaller 3rd-storey windows have only 3 panes. Giant flanking Doric pilasters, fluted and with a triglyphed section of entablature above each one; modillioned eaves cornice across whole front, breaking forward above the pilasters. Between the 2nd-storey windows is a stone tablet carved with a quatrefoil and date 1635; in its centre are the initials TH. At rear the gallery' (a 2-storeyed link building with closet on top) is of brick in ground and 2nd storeys and has old roughcast (possibly on a timber frame) above; barred sashes. Front wall of back block covered with old roughcast, probably on brick or timber-framing; barred sashes in ground storey. INTERIOR: formerly had 2 early C17 broad-rib ceilings, together with fireplaces and overmantels, on ground and first floors. The fireplaces, overmantels and first-floor ceiling are now at Stafford Barton, Dolton; ground-floor ceiling is in the gatehouse at Shute Barton, east Devon. The ground storey in front block has been heightened, and second floor totally removed, both here and in the gallery. Nevertheless, features of interest may still be hidden under plaster in the partitions and outer walls, especially in the back block, which seems to have avoided major structural alteration. The roof structures, also of possible interest, are not easily accessible. HISTORICAL NOTE: the house was Corporation property, leased in 1634 to Thomas Horwood, merchant, founder of the Church Lane almshouses, on preferential terms; he was to spend »200 within 5 yearsin building...the said tenement'. A lease of 1648 describes the house as `lately reedified and new built'. An agreement of 1635 shows that Horwood was then about to build a gallery on the right-hand (eastern) boundary wall. Horwood (d.1658) and his wife Alice appear to have lived in the house until their deaths. The freehold was sold off for redemption of Land Tax in 1916.

Listing NGR: SS5571733202