25,25A,27 AND 27A, FORE STREET

This property comprises a shop and flats, originally a house, dating to the 16th century with subsequent additions. The walls are largely solid and rendered, incorporating cob, with asbestos slated roofs. The front exhibits chimney-shafts on each gable; the left-hand gable features late 19th-century brickwork, while the right-hand gable has 16th or 17th-century granite ashlar with a tapered top. The building follows an L-shaped layout, with the front range potentially originating as a 3-room and cross-passage type. A late 16th or 17th-century addition sits above an archway to the right. A 20th-century addition is located at the rear, slightly off-centre to the right.

The front facade is two stories high and has a four-window arrangement. The ground floor includes a central doorway with an early 19th-century reeded wood surround and a pair of small brackets that originally supported a hood. Late 19th-century shop windows flank the doorway. A 20th-century window marks the far left end, likely replacing a former doorway. The far right end showcases a flat-headed cart entrance; its rear lintel is chamfered with scroll-stops on one side and straight-cut stops on the other. The second floor features a blocked window centrally, with two 2-pane sash windows to the left and two 20th-century windows to the right.

Inside, the shop door opens into a former cross-passage. Ceiling beams are visible on either side – those on the right are partially hidden by a partition, while the left-hand beam displays stud-mortices indicating a former doorway. To the left of the cross-passage, the ceiling rises, suggesting a former open hall was floored over during the late 16th or 17th century. This section features a full beam and a half-beam, both ovolo-moulded, with a raised run-out stop surviving on the half-beam. A plain boxed beam to the left likely marked the former division between the hall and an inner room. To the right of the cross-passage is a room with a chamfered ceiling beam.

The rear wing, to the left, also has a plastered chamfered ceiling beam. A doorway connecting the wing to the front range displays a wood bolection-moulded architrave with a pulvinated frieze above, near a fragment of box-cornice. The front range appears to have been largely re-roofed in the 19th century. A closed truss, dating to the 16th or 17th century, with threaded purlins remains above the division between the cross-passage and the lower room. A room above the cart entrance is separated from the main house by a cob wall and has a roof with purlins fixed to end walls. The rear wing incorporates jointed cruck trusses. Further details are likely concealed behind plaster.