62, Boutport Street

BARNSTAPLE

SS5533SE BOUTPORT STREET 684-1/7/45 (East side) 19/01/51 No.62 (Formerly Listed as: BOUTPORT STREET (East side) No.62 National Westminster Bank)

GV I

Formerly known as: No.61A BOUTPORT STREET. House, later hotel, now building society offices. 1620, re-fronted in early C19. Rendered front. Hipped, slated roof, red-brick chimney on right-hand side wall. L-shaped plan, 2 rooms wide at the front with 2 large rooms in rear wing to right. Axial chimney between the 2 wing rooms. 4 storeys. 3-window range, the outer windows of 3 lights and set in shallow bows. Ground storey divided into 3 bays, the narrow central entrance-bay flanked by unfluted Doric columns with matching pilaster at each end, these supporting an entablature which breaks forward round the bow windows and entrance. Raised band above each upper storey; moulded eaves cornice. The windows, including those in the ground storey, have barred sashes, all of them C20 replacements. INTERIOR: has been considerably altered, but retain 3 fine original ceilings, including one that is probably the best piece of urban plasterwork of its period in Devon and has few rivals even in the country houses. The ceilings were originally in first-floor rooms, until the floors were removed to convert the building into a bank in the 1930s. The best ceiling is at the front end of the wing: barrel-vaulted with broad enriched ribs, the panel filled with birds, animal and biblical scenes. Open-work pendants containing human figures, one inscribed July 9th' and another1620'. Coat of arms on end wall belonging to the Company of Merchants trading with Spain, presumably because one of the merchants lived in the house. Original timber frame carrying the ceiling survives. Rear room in wing has another broad rib ceiling, this time with more conventional detail in the panels. It is 3-sided, built under the collars of the roof trusses with the principal rafters showing. Principals decorated with large human figures, these standing on brackets resembling hammer beams. In the front wall of this room (at ground-floor level) is an original stone fireplace with rectangular moulded surround. Right-hand front room (now the office foyer) has a single rib ceiling decorated with winged horses. This was treated as original by Bruce Oliver in 1917, although it seems to contain some much more recent work, possibly by GP Bankart. HISTORICAL NOTE: before its conversion to a bank, the building was used as the Golden Lion Hotel. According to Bruce Oliver, who converted the building in the 1930s, there was no evidence of original colour on the ceilings, except that the lions' tongues were picked out in red. A fireplace from the house was removed to Fardell Manor, Cornwood. (Supplement to the Architectural Review, Sept 1898: 147; Transactions of Devonshire Association: Oliver B: The Early Seventeenth Century Plaster Ceilings of Barnstaple: 1917-: 190-199; Country Life, 5.10.1935: 362-363).

Listing NGR: SS5589633057