1, Duke Street

DARTMOUTH

SX874510 DUKE STREET 673-1/8/106 (South side) 11/12/69 No.1 (Formerly Listed as: DUKE STREET (South side) Nos.1 AND 3 Steam Packet Inn)

GV II

Merchant's house, now shop with flats above. Probably 1639, built on land leased to Edward Spurway, with various C19 and C20 modernisations. Mixed construction; thick local stone rubble side walls with plastered timber-framed front and back walls; original stack in left party wall and secondary stack in right wall have C19 brick chimneyshafts with pots; slate roof. PLAN: End onto the street with a one-room plan. EXTERIOR: 4 storeys; one-window range. The ends of the stone side walls corbel out to carry the jettied upper storeys; the right one contains a stone plaque at first-floor level with worn or obscured inscription. Ground floor has modernised C19 timber shop front, central window and corner posts to recessed doorway near left end which contains a bottom-panelled glazed door under narrow plain overlight. House has separate recessed doorway to right, with C20 part-glazed door under an overlight grille. Upper floors contain tripartite sashes with central horned 4-pane sashes. Half-hipped roof. INTERIOR: Mostly the result of C19 and C20 modernisation. Ground floor has been cleared of any partitions and rear wall knocked through to connect with No.3 Duke Street (qv) and No.12 The Quay (qv). C17 carpentry and other features probably survive behind the C19 and C20 plaster. HISTORY: 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 the port facilities with the New Quay. This began in 1585, and by the second phase, in the 1630s, this was the most fashionable part of the town, and the surviving C17 houses are amongst the best merchants' houses of their period in Devon and bear comparison with any in England. They dominate the scale and appearance of the area and influenced the style of many of the later buildings in their vicinity. (Freeman, Ray: Dartmouth and its Neighbours: Phillimore: 1990-: P.76-83).

Listing NGR: SX8778851389