12, The Quay

Merchant's house, now a grocery shop with flats above, located in Dartmouth. Probably built in 1639 on land leased to Edward Spurway, with subsequent alterations dating from the late 17th century, 19th century and 20th century.

The building is constructed with thick party walls of local stone rubble, front and back walls of plastered timber-framing, and a stone rubble stack in the right party wall with a 19th-century brick chimneyshaft. The roof is slate.

Originally, the building was probably constructed as the left-hand house of a pair with the adjoining No.13 The Quay, built end onto The Quay with a one-room plan and stack in the right party wall shared with No.13. There was no early stair, and by the late 17th century access to the first floor was from the adjoining properties. By the late 19th century the ground floor had been cleared of partitions and converted to a grocery shop, which survives little altered.

The exterior comprises three storeys with attics and a two-window range. Although superficially late 19th century in appearance, the 17th-century structure is indicated by jettied upper floors. The ends of the stone party walls corbel out to carry the jetties and are plastered, though in the right wall a hoodmould just below the corbelling for the second-floor jetty indicates the survival of a date plaque. The ground floor features a very good late 19th-century timber shop front with polished marble plinth, plate-glass windows divided by slender turned mahogany standards and segmental-arch heads containing ventilators in the spandrels, curving windows to a central recessed doorway with a good bottom-panelled glazed door under an overlight. The fascia displays original gilded lettering (still the same company) behind glass, with large brackets at each end for the blind which remains in use. Windows above date from the late 19th and 20th centuries. Two canted bays on the first floor contain casements without glazing bars, though boxed posts at each end may derive from earlier windows. Two horned four-pane sashes on the second floor and a 20th-century tripartite sash without glazing bars above are present. The bottom corner of the second-floor bressummer is carved with an unusual version of bead-and-reel, very early for 1639. A probably contemporary moulded beam serves the attic floor. The gable is plain and tall.

The interior has all carpentry hidden behind 19th and 20th-century plaster and blocked fireplaces, but the 17th-century house is probably well-preserved. The first floor retains original ornamental plasterwork overmantel featuring a coat of arms, pegasi, cherub heads, stars and a spray. A corridor behind apparently connects late 17th-century doorways in the party walls on both sides. The second floor was not available for inspection. The attic shows the bottom of principals of an original three-bay roof. The ground-floor shop is largely late 19th century with boarded walls and ceilings and still uses some contemporary shelves, drawers and other fittings.

This is one of a group of merchants' houses built on reclaimed land in a Town Corporation-backed scheme to reclaim land for housing and expand port facilities with the New Quay, which began in 1585. By the second phase in the 1630s, this was the most fashionable part of the town, and the surviving 17th-century houses here are amongst the best merchants' houses of their period in Devon.