Elizabethan House And Local Museum

ELIZABETHAN HOUSE AND LOCAL MUSEUM, FORE STREET

A merchant's house built in the later 16th or early 17th century, now a museum. This is a fine example of the Elizabethan West Country development of Pantin's right-angled house type with narrow plan, showing affinities to the continental "maison a deux corps de batiments". The building comprises a three-bay main house with a side passage to the east and an internal entry passage on the west side, connected by a gallery to a freestanding kitchen and buttery at the rear. The main house originally contained a front shop, central staircase with attached spence, and rear parlour on the ground floor. The first floor held a fore-hall, counting house, and dining hall with attached closets over the east side passage. The building was possibly constructed by the Kelland family, later served as the Eugene Inn and subsequently the Commercial Inn in the 19th century.

The structure stands three storeys with attics. The four-bay facade has a gabled front with a renewed Welsh slate roof. Random Devonian limestone forms the party and rear walls with dressed quoins and moulded granite jetty corbels. The timber-framed front features two bracketed jetties with carved bressumers and brackets. The gable and ground floor are cement-rendered, while the first floor displays exposed timber framing with plaster infill panels.

Windows include gable windows with flush-framed sashes and glazing bars, and a ten-light oriel window to the first-floor fore-hall with leaded lights, inserted circa 1900 (with carved date), replacing the original 16th or 17th-century opening. Modern three-light mullioned windows with leaded lights and barred fanlights occupy the ground floor. A modern architraved doorway features a nail-studded panel door with ornamental hinges. The side elevation, three storeys high, contains a timber-framed staircase bay with four-light windows, mostly renewed. The rear facade shows six-light mullioned stone windows with cavetto mouldings, hood moulds and leaded lights. A timber-framed first-floor gallery connects to the kitchen block, which has an open ground-floor loggia. The two-storey masonry kitchen range features two and four-light windows matching those on the rear of the main house. A lead rainwater head dated "W.P 1823" survives.

The interior retains an original spiral staircase with a round timber newel rising the full height of the house, featuring turned balusters and newels to landings. Panelled partitions to chambers and the staircase display ogee mouldings; similar mouldings and carved "urn type" stops adorn doorways on the first and second floors. The first-floor fore-hall oriel window recess displays ovolo mouldings. Original fireplaces in the side walls have flattened arched heads with ogee mouldings and "urn type" stops matching the joinery. A first-floor fireplace retains its plaster back decorated with painted chequerwork. Two early 17th-century chimneypieces were relocated and inserted circa 1962: one brought from No 49 Fore Street into the ground-floor back chamber, and another from 14 High Street into the rear kitchen.

The building was extensively renovated between 1958 and 1962 when it was converted for use as a museum.