Tudor House

This is a late 16th-century Tudor house, likely originally a wing of a larger property. It is situated on Wolborough Street, Newton Abbot. The front of the house is rendered over a cob and rubble core, while the right return displays unpainted render and limestone rubble. The roof is slate-covered, with two external rubblestone stacks to the right return – one large and offset on the lower part, and a brick stack to the left. A shop front was inserted in the 19th century.

The house is two storeys high with a gable-end facing the street and a single-window range to the gable. A 19th-century two-light, three-pane casement window occupies the first floor to the left, with a corresponding C19 shop front below. The shop front has a fascia and cornice over a 20th-century door to the left, and a two-row, four-pane window to the right. Further 19th-century casement windows are visible on the right return.

Inside, the ground floor bays are divided by moulded crossbeams, with stop-chamfered joists. A former open fire on the right-hand wall features exposed rough red sandstone voussoirs forming a relieving arch, along with part of an oak lintel. A low, semicircular arched rebated doorway, with a pegged arched lintel, leads to a stone newel staircase to the left of the fire. A similar doorcase, with a door (possibly repositioned), leads to a 19th-century rear room.

The upper room has jointed cruck trusses and some exposed timber-framing with pegged vertical studs to the front gable. An oak lintel supports a fireplace in the left-hand wall, with stone corbels, and faint traces of lozenge-pattern decoration are visible in the plaster to the right. Semicircular-arched doorways, similar to those on the ground floor, are found in the rear wall and at the top of the stairs; the rear doorway is not rebated. A 19th-century two-storey bay has been inserted to the left of the stairs, cutting away the wallplate. Plaster motifs of scrolls and formalised flowers and leaves are visible over the doors and fireplace, with traces of an ornamental plaster frieze, approximately 10cm deep, which rises like a hoodmould over the rear door. The house appears to have been part of, and likely the chamber or parlour wing of, a larger house, evidenced by the good internal detail in the upper room.