South Street Auction Rooms

The South Street Auction Rooms, originally a school, is a building from the early to mid-19th century located on South Street in Newport, Barnstaple. It features a solid rendered front and a slated roof, with a layout that is two rooms wide and one room deep, where the left room on each floor is significantly larger.

The building stands two storeys high and has a five-window range, with a large unwindowed space between the second and third windows from the left. Centrally located on the ground floor is a square entrance porch with horizontal channelling and voussoirs marked out in the cement. The round-arched doorway is fitted with three-panelled double doors and has a top entablature with a blocking course. In front of the right-hand jamb is a large shoescraper, and on either side of the entrance are small added closets with rusticated quoins and a top cornice; the top of a former window can be seen behind the right-hand closet. Each end of the ground storey features a triple-sashed window with 12 over 8 panes in the centre and 3 over 2 panes at the sides. To the right of the right-hand closet is a blocked doorway. The upper storey has four windows with 6-paned sashes, with a blind window second from the right. Prominent rusticated pilaster strips are located at each end of the front, and there is a plain eaves-board.

Inside, the ground floor has a plank dado and six-panelled double doors between the rooms. The right-hand room includes a mid-19th century chimneypiece on the rear wall, made of painted slate with a bracketed shelf, a cast-iron grate with the original basket, and a surround of coloured patterned tiles. In the right-hand rear corner of the left room is an L-shaped wooden staircase with oblong section balusters. The upper-floor rooms feature moulded wood cornices and exposed king-post-and-ridge roof trusses. The building was described in a 1973 list as a Sunday School dated 1841, although no date is currently visible. It is reputed to have been a British National School.