Nos. 20 (Manor Cottage), 22 (Cottage Retreat) And 24

Row of three houses on the north side of East Street in Bovey Tracey, probably originally a single large house. Early 16th century with later additions at the rear. The buildings have solid rendered walls and slated roofs.

The front ranges of Nos. 22 and 24 are topped with blue glazed ridge-tiles, while No. 20 has clay ridge-tiles, some of which appear to be old handmade examples with low crests. The rear wing of No. 22 has similar ridge-tiles. A 19th-century red brick chimney stack stands on the ridge between Nos. 22 and 24.

Nos. 20 and 22 have a three-room medieval plan, with the former open hall and one two-storeyed end contained within No. 20, while the other storeyed end lies within No. 22. No. 24, also pre-1700 and sharing a roof with the other two houses, was likely part of the same original building, though its precise relationship is unclear. The building may formerly have extended further west onto the site now occupied by No. 18.

The two-storey, four-window front is most evident in No. 20, the left-hand house, which preserves a good 19th-century exterior two windows wide. All windows are three-light wood casements of varying sizes with three panes per light. The ground storey of No. 20 features a six-panelled door in its centre, with the four lower panels flush with raised reeded borders and the two top panels ovolo-moulded and now glazed. The door has a brass lion-head knocker and is flanked by moulded wood architrave with a small flat moulded hood. Nos. 22 and 24 are each one window wide with 20th-century windows and doors, each door topped by a small flat moulded wooden hood on shaped brackets.

Interior of No. 20: The ground-floor partitions are not original. The front range has been remodelled to provide a two-room and through-passage plan, different in dimension from the medieval plan reconstructed from the upper-floor beam arrangement. On the right-hand side of the passage is an unplastered 19th-century timber-framed partition with stone rubble nogging. On the left-hand side is a stone rubble wall with an old beam on top, possibly the reset head beam of an original partition.

The left-hand room features chamfered joists laid lengthwise with rounded ends visible in the passage, clearly forming the end of a deep internal jetty that projected into the open hall. Inside the room, the chamfer is interrupted where it must have overlain a partition, with pyramid stops at either side of the interruption and against the left-hand gable-wall. A distinctive feature is that the joist nearest the front wall is not chamfered on the side facing the wall, but instead has a series of thick, short plain joists projecting from it at right angles. These short joists are properly pegged to the main joist and may have originally projected into the street as an external jetty; the former presence of such a jetty at the opposite No. 21 East Street is discussed in its own listing.

The left-hand room also has a former opening at the rear next to the gable-wall with a pegged trimmer, possibly designed for a staircase. The right-hand room has similar rounded joist-ends projecting from the right-hand party wall with No. 22. The wall is said to be thin and could well contain an early partition under plaster. The joist-ends are chamfered with pyramid stops against the party wall, indicating a very shallow internal jetty at this end of the hall.

The main beam of the right-hand room runs crosswise and is a later insertion, probably of the 17th century. It is ovolo-moulded with raised run-out stops, with scratch-moulded joists on either side extending to the jetties at either end of the former hall; those on the left are exposed in the passage. Both rooms have fireplaces in the rear wall. That in the right-hand room is 20th-century, but the left-hand room has a large fireplace with jambs of plain heavy granite blocks and a chamfered wood lintel with mutilated stops designed for a slightly wider opening. A lean-to at the rear contains a large 19th-century oven in its left wall.

The medieval roof survives over the whole of the front range of No. 20 and appears to continue at least over No. 22. Two closed trusses with cambered collars and king-struts correspond to the ends of the jetties, with the framework exposed in the second storey. Between the closed trusses is a smoke-blackened two-bay hall roof with an arch-braced truss in the centre having a straight collar-beam. The trusses have threaded purlins but no ridge-piece. The unblackened roof over the left-hand side of the house has one truss in the centre with its collar missing, and a second truss against the gable-wall. This could be a gable-truss, characteristic of high-class roofing, but could also suggest the house originally extended further west. It can just be seen that this truss is a jointed cruck; the feet of the other trusses are not visible.

The interiors of Nos. 22 and 24 were not inspected in detail, although the front ground-storey rooms were visible through the windows. No. 22 has a large fireplace in the right-hand wall with granite jambs and heavy wooden lintel, and an exposed upper-floor beam. No. 24 has a heavy chamfered upper-floor beam.