Little Front House

SX 8178 BOVEY TRACEY EAST STREET (south side), Bovey Tracey 11/66 - Little Front House

GV II

Self-catering apartments, part of Front House Guest House (q.v.); formerly a single house. C16 or early C17, with later additions. Stone and timber-framing. Tarred, slated roof gable-end on to street. Rendered chimney-stack in left-hand wall. Seems to have been one room wide and 2 rooms deep, with some evidence of a passage on right-hand side. 2 storeys. Jettied, timber-framed front covered with roughcast; set between side-walls faced with granite ashlar, the upper storeys projecting on moulded corbels to match the jetty. 1 C20 window in each storey: 4- light casement with leaded panes to right of ground storey, 4-light casement with 2 transom-lights in centre of second storey. Tie-beam and principal rafters with notched apex exposed in gable, probably C19. Projecting eaves on brackets, also C19. Lean-to on right-hand side a later addition; double doors late C18 or early C19, each leaf with flush lower panel of wood and later glazed upper panel. To left a rubble wall masking the 80-centimetre gap between Little Front House and Front House Guest House. Original rear wall of rendered stone. Interior: ground storey has fireplace with chamfered wood lintel roughly central in left-hand wall. Former partition-beam with large mortices on its soffit butts into the rear end of the chimney-breast. Above a C20 partition dividing off the front of the house a chamfered beam with step-stops; at right-hand end disused mortices, probably for a former side-passage partition, its position defined by step-stops. Heavy plain joists with pegged trimmer, probably for a former staircase adjoining side-passage. Doorway with chamfered wood lintel in right-hand side-wall. Second storey and roof not inspected. This is the only house in Bovey Tracey to retain the jettied front of mixed stone and timber construction characteristic of the richer Devon towns is C16 and C17.

Listing NGR: SX8174478566