Rainbow House

Rainbow House is an early 19th-century house, incorporating a shop, located on the square in Chulmleigh. It is constructed of rendered stone rubble with an asbestos slate roof and large gable end brick stacks. The plan features two rooms deep, with the principal front room on each side of a through-passage. The left-hand room currently serves as an antique shop. The two rear rooms are heated; the room to the right was likely a second parlour, and the room to the left the kitchen, separated by an axial partition creating a small pump room between the kitchen and the passage. Two staircases run from front to rear: a servants' staircase on the left, accessed from the kitchen and the front room, and a principal staircase on the right, accessed from the passage. A separate staircase leads down to the cellar, located beneath the front left-hand room.

The exterior is two storeys high, with a symmetrical three-bay facade. It features rusticated quoins and retains its original 19th-century fenestration, consisting entirely of 12-paned hornless sash windows. A large single-paned shop window is located to the left of the doorway, with a plain timber fascia and pilasters. The semi-circular arched central doorway has a rusticated surround, a human head keystone, a raised and fielded six-panelled door, and a fanlight.

The interior retains largely intact 19th-century fittings. The front right-hand principal room has a marble chimneypiece, a plaster cornice, and a segmental arched alcove to the rear wall. Straight-run 19th-century staircases are present. The kitchen fireplace was rebuilt in the 20th century, but other fittings remain intact, including the pump and pump-room partition. 19th-century register grates are found in the second parlour and principal bedrooms. The roof structure includes four wide-span king-post trusses. Rainbow House served as the town Post Office in the 19th and early 20th centuries. A blocked doorway leads to the former toll-house adjoining the left end, which was once used as the sorting office. The rear doorway has been narrowed in the 20th century; it formerly provided external access to the pump room. It is believed the house was once divided into two separate occupations.