2 And 4, Courtenay Street

Nos. 2 and 4 Courtenay Street are two shops located on a curved corner site in Newton Abbot, built between 1850 and 1860. The buildings are constructed of painted stucco with a slate roof and have an L-shaped plan. They rise four storeys, including an attic, and feature a nine-window range. The upper floors have plate-glass sash windows with horns. Each floor and the parapet are highlighted by pilasters, with a giant order on the first and second floors, paired on the right return. There are entablatures and cornices at the panelled parapet and second floor, eared architraves on the attic windows, and a blank panel at the corner. The second-floor windows have flanking pilasters and a continuous moulded sill string, while the corner features a tripartite casement. The first-floor windows have cornices over eared architraves and a tripartite sash at the corner. The ground floor displays banded rustication and a triglyph frieze, with some windows converted to doors in the 20th century. The windows of No. 2 have banded moulded architraves with rounded arrises and keystones. The entrance to No. 4 and the former corner entrance to No. 2 are flanked by painted granite fluted Doric columns. No. 4 features canted bays with a late 19th-century set-back shop front, decorative tops and bases to fluted colonettes, and moulded sills framing the plate-glass windows, with ornamental cast-iron railings below the sills. The interior has not been inspected but is known to have been altered. This striking commercial design is situated on a prominent corner site opposite No. 1 and is part of the development of the area for the Courtenays, Earls of Devon.