26 And 27, Bear Street

BARNSTAPLE

SS5633 BEAR STREET 684-1/3/14 (North side) 31/08/88 Nos.26 AND 27

GV II

Shop, house and business premises, originally built as seed and wool stores for W & J Hutchings. Late C19. Cream-coloured brick with stone dressings. Slated roofs with crested red ridge-tiles and a finial. Chimney of matching brick on each side wall on front range, both with decorated pots. Plan consists of house at the front with cart entrance in centre of ground storey, leading to long narrow courtyard at the back with warehouses and offices on all 3 sides. Shop has been inserted on right-hand side of frontage. 2 storeys with garret. 3-bay front with brick pilasters flanking and separating the bays. Left-hand bay, with dormer gable at the top, has 2-light window with curved stone lintel in each of ground and 2nd storeys, the lights separated by a stone column with carved capital. Narrower middle bay has cart entrance with segmental brick arch and keystone carved with a ram's head; double plank doors with open panels of wrought-iron scrollwork at the top. Window with segmental brick arch and keystone in upper storey. Right-hand bay has doorway with segmental brick arch and keystone to left; C20 shop window to right. In upper storey 3 windows with segmental brick arches and keystones. Above the middle and right-hand bays a stone cornice and brick parapet, the former supported by brackets reminiscent of machicolations. The courtyard buildings are similar in character and apparently in their original state. At the far end of the left-hand side is a building with large, sliding wooden doors in ground storey and an upper storey fronted with wooden louvres. The building is a remarkably complete example of combined dwelling and commercial premises in late C19. (Harper's Albums: 17).

Listing NGR: SS5613933336