York House

York House is a late 19th-century retail and residential building located on South Embankment in Dartmouth. It was likely designed in 1893 by EH Back, the borough surveyor. The building features a mixed construction with timber-framed show fronts, grey limestone rubble walls, red brick, and Bathstone dressings. Significant chimneyshafts in red brick, built in an Elizabethan style, rise from an axial stack, two rear lateral stacks, and a stack at the right end. The roof is gabled and covered in slate.

The building has a four-room plan, originally with two separate shops which have since been combined. The exterior is four stories high and exhibits an ornamental Elizabethan style. The north front, facing The Quay, features two wide timber shop windows, largely original, with a continuous clerestory of small rectangular panes. First-floor jetties and balconies shelter the shop fronts, supported by shaped timber brackets. The symmetrical upper front has four windows, with the outer bays projecting forward. These bays contain ovolo-moulded three-light mullion-and-transom windows, with larger lower sashes and original horns, but without glazing bars. The inner bays have similar two-light windows. Shaped joist ends project through moulded cornices and brackets decorate the corners of the jetties. The timber framing incorporates narrow panels and criss-cross braces under the windows, with slate cladding elsewhere. A full-width single slate, with toothed edges, alternates between grey and purple. Gables over the windows feature diagonal bracing, bargeboards in a trellis pattern, finials. The east gable end, facing South Embankment, continues the Elizabethan style, with a slightly more ornate appearance including a canted bay on the first floor. A house door is set within a red brick section, featuring a painted stone doorway and side light with a six-panel door and overlight. A datestone is on the left side of the doorway. The west gable end wall is constructed of grey limestone rubble, with Bathstone windows. The upper floors have not been inspected but are likely to be of architectural interest.