Golden Fleece Inn

A public house in Barnstaple on Tuly Street. The building comprises an early or mid-19th-century main range incorporating a late 16th or early 17th-century rear wing.

The main range has rendered solid walls, probably of stone or brick, with a tarred slated roof. The rear wing is patchily covered with roughcast; it appears to be of stone rubble with an upper storey of cob, except for the rear (east) gable wall which is of exposed red brick in English bond and is covered with corrugated asbestos. Three rendered chimneys are asymmetrically placed on the main range, and there is a chimney in the rear gable of the early wing with a rebuilt shaft.

The building is arranged on a double-depth plan with a central passage along its spine. A carriageway runs through the left-hand end of the building, leading to a stable yard at the rear. The early wing contains one small room on each floor.

The front elevation is two storeys high. It comprises a six-window range divided into three unequal bays by pilaster-strips: three windows in the centre bay, two to the left and one to the right. The centre bay contains a doorway flanked by windows. The doorway has a moulded architrave and a flat moulded hood on consoles. The windows have rusticated cement architraves with vermiculated key blocks; the openings (now boarded) originally had triple sashes. The three upper-storey windows have slightly raised cement arches, originally rusticated, with 6-pane sashes.

The left-hand bay features a segmental arched carriage gate with double doors to the right and a similar blind or blocked archway to its left with a pier between them. There are two windows with plain heads and 6-pane sashes in the upper storey. The right-hand bay has a 4-panelled door with an oblong fanlight in the ground storey and a 6-paned sash window above. Neither opening is decorated; this appears to have been the original arrangement, as a 1916 photograph shows that only the openings in the middle bay were then decorated. In 1916 the right-hand doorway was a window with 6-paned sashes. The front is finished with a plain band and parapet with coping, with the pilaster-strips continued on the parapet. The rear wall has several barred sashes.

The right-hand side wall of the early wing, visible from the rear of No. 17, has a sash window in the ground storey with a blocked doorway to the right. In the upper storey is a 2-light wood-mullioned window; the mullions are moulded, and the right-hand light is filled with diamond-shaped panes of old green glass in lead cames. Similar glass from the other light may be lying loose inside.

The interior has nothing of special interest, though the early wing is likely to have early fireplaces and possibly other features hidden under plaster. Although the early building is only a fragment, it possesses considerable quality and provides rare evidence of house-building in cob in the old town centre.

The Golden Fleece was built by the Barnstaple Bridge Trust and sold by them in 1922. An early engraving of it is recorded in Harper's Albums, Vol. 5, p. 49, in the North Devon Athenaeum. The rear wing may originally have been part of No. 17.