Birdwood House

Birdwood House is a later 16th century or early 17th century merchant's house of the "deux corps de batiments" type, which still retains the little and great courts at the rear. The building was refronted in the late 18th century and was formerly known as Somerset House and later as Paynes House. It has been the residence of the Babbage family and also of William Payne, who was an innkeeper and mayor in 1707 and 1728, as well as Dr. Roger Birdwood, who served as mayor in 1781, 1789, and 1795.

The house is three storeys high with a central dormer and a symmetrical front featuring three windows. It has a hipped Welsh slate roof with rendered stacks and projecting eaves that have a coved cornice. The plastered front retains a moulded granite corbel from the former first-floor jetty. The flat-headed casement dormer has glazing bars, and the architraved sash windows also feature glazing bars. The ground floor has a three-bay loggia over the pavement, supported by granite Tuscan columns that bear an entablature. The central doorway includes a rectangular fanlight and a raised and fielded panel door.

Inside, there is a late 18th-century open well staircase leading to the upper floors, which features carved brackets, turned balusters, octagonal column newels, and moulded, ramped handrails. The interior was remodelled in the early 19th century. At the rear, there is a 16th-century detached kitchen block connected to the house by a passage that was once the site of a gallery. This former kitchen block is two storeys high with one window and has a bitumenised Welsh slate roof. The gable wall is made of Devonian random limestone rubble, while the front is close-studded timber-framed with chamfered studs and bressumers, and plaster panels. The first floor features a four-light mullioned window with ogee mouldings and 19th-century fenestration, while the ground floor retains the remains of a similar three-light window. At the rear of the kitchen, connected by a passage, is a three-storey warehouse with a Welsh slate roof and a Devonian limestone rubble gable wall, and a slate-hung timber-framed front with modern openings.