The Jolly Abbot Public House

The Jolly Abbot is a public house in Newton Abbot, dating back to the 17th century with alterations and extensions from the 19th and 20th centuries. The building is constructed with painted render over a timber frame, rubblestone rear wings, and has a double-pitched slate roof with forward-facing gables, including a brick stack to the left and three brick ridge stacks to the two-storey rear left wing.

The two-storey front elevation, with an original three-window range, has jettied upper floors. The upper floors contain C19 moulded frames and horizontal glazing bars to 2/2-pane sash windows, one to each attic and to the first floor of the left-hand gable, and two to the first floor of the right-hand gable. The ground floor has early 20th-century fixed windows with leaded lights.

Inside, the original 4-bay arched collar-beam roof structure with mortices for threaded purlins remains, though it is now partially hidden under a C19 higher-pitched gabled cladding. A large room on the first floor of the rear left wing features a high coved ceiling, exposed studding to the party wall of the main block, and panelled shutters. The ground floor has been largely altered, with the exception of one chamfered beam to the rear left. C19 laundry equipment remains in the rear wing.

The building has historical significance, as the first meeting of the Wolborough Iron Mining Company purportedly took place there around 1872, marking a moment when Augustus Smith identified haematite ore on Firestone Hill, leading to the Wolborough Iron Mine producing 1,240 tons of haematite between 1872 and 1873.