3, Duke Street

DARTMOUTH

SX874510 DUKE STREET 673-1/8/107 (South side) 11/12/69 No.3 (Formerly Listed as: DUKE STREET (South side) Nos.1 AND 3 Steam Packet Inn)

GV II

Merchant's house, more recently the Steam Packet Inn, now tea rooms with offices and flats above. Dated 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 stone rubble stack with C19 brick chimneyshaft to right party wall; slate roof. PLAN: End onto the street with a one-room plan; no ground-floor fireplace because this was always a shop. Curved alcove to rear of left party wall indicates position of original newel stair and suggests former side passage along this side. EXTERIOR: 3 storeys and attic; one-window range. The ends of the stone side walls corbel out to carry the jettied upper floors and both contain worn stone plaques at first-floor level: the right one is thought to belong to this house and has 1639 date with initials WB and ES. Ground floor has late C19 timber shop front, 3 lights with overlights flanked by recessed doorways, each containing a similar part-glazed door under an overlight with glazing bars. Bottom edge of first-floor bressummer carved with a kind of bead-and-reel - very early for 1639. Canted bay to first floor with front horned 4-pane sash and similar sashes to second floor and attic with a narrower sash second-floor left. Gable above with C19 open wavey bargeboards and timber apex finial and pendant. 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.1 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. (Freeman, Ray: Dartmouth and its Neighbours: Phillimore: 1990-: P.76-83).

Listing NGR: SX8778351388