50, Fore Street

This is a late 16th or early 17th century merchant’s house, built in the “deux corps de batiments” style. The brick facade was rebuilt in the later 19th century. It was originally constructed as one of a pair with No. 48, sharing a common party wall. The building is three stories high with a dormer. It has two windows on the second floor. The roof and front were renewed in the later 19th century. The roof is now hipped, covered with Welsh slate, and features a modern dormer and boxed-out eaves. The front is plastered, with jettied first and second floors. The party walls are of Devonian limestone with moulded granite corbels that indicate the former jetties. The second-floor windows are architraved sash windows; the first floor has a splayed bow oriel window with a dentil cornice. There is a modern shopfront. The architraved house doorway leads to a passage containing an original partition made of muntin and plank. A good Elizabethan plaster ceiling with rib patterns is present in the front first-floor room, which was originally the fore hall of the house. Part of the original hall ceiling (in the back room on the first floor) is preserved behind a false ceiling, along with a corbelled lintel of the original hall fireplace. The front room on the second floor (the former fore-chamber) also has a decorated Elizabethan plaster ceiling. The building is designated Grade II* for its interior details and group value.