39 AND 41, HIGH STREET (See details for further address information)

Nos. 39 and 41 High Street, including the Butterwalk, are two separate houses with a long history of single ownership. No. 38 was built around 1624 by John Wise, a merchant, and No. 41 may have been rebuilt in the mid-18th century. No. 39 is of a "deux corps de batiments" type, retaining a built-over small court and a separate kitchen block.

The houses are three storeys high and were refronted in the early to mid-19th century to appear as a pair, with three windows to the first floor. They have hipped Welsh slate roofs and red brick stacks. The party wall on the east side of No. 39 is of Devonian limestone rubble with an arched entrance over the Butterwalk loggia. The frontages of the houses are timber-framed and slate-hung to the first and second floors, finished with an eaves cornice.

No. 39 features three-light sash windows. No. 41 has paired sash windows with glazing bars to the second floor, and three-light windows to the outer bays of the first floor. A ground floor loggia is carved on Tuscan columns supporting an entablature and provides access to the passage entrances, which have rectangular fanlights and panelled doors.

The interior of No. 39 is notable, particularly the former staircase bay which originally featured an open yard on the west side of the house, approached by a side passage, similar to No 70 Fore Street. This area was incorporated into the ground floor shop in the early to mid-19th century, although the yard area at first-floor level retains early 19th-century sash windows with margin lights. The interior also boasts decorated plaster ceilings with ribbing, rosettes, pendants, moulded cornices and timber beam enrichments, particularly in the ground floor former staircase bay and first floor rooms (the former hall and fore-hall). The front first-floor room has a particularly fine plaster ceiling bearing the monogram "I.D." and "W.D." of William Dowse. Other visible features include the site of a former gallery with an arched doorway to the kitchen block, a kitchen with open fireplaces, and framed partitions. No. 41 contains a mid-18th century open staircase with a closed string, turned balusters, a square newel post, and a moulded handrail.