Number 1 Cooper Street And Numbers 53, 54 And 55 Mill Street

A group of three adjoining early-to-mid-19th-century commercial buildings forming a corner block in Bideford, comprising number 1 Cooper Street and numbers 53, 54 and 55 Mill Street. The buildings originally contained shops at ground level with offices and living accommodation in the storeys above.

The structures have solid rendered walls and slate roofs. Number 53 Mill Street retains perforated crested red ridge-tiles. Number 1 Cooper Street has an added garret with a corrugated-iron roof. The Mill Street range features two stone-rubble chimneys with flat projecting caps set on the ridge above the party-walls; a red-brick chimney, probably of later date, sits on the ridge of the Cooper Street range.

The buildings rise three storeys with an added garret over the Cooper Street range. The Cooper Street frontage presents two wide bays while the Mill Street frontage has three narrower bays. The upper storeys are articulated by pilasters standing on a sill-band beneath the second-storey windows; paired pilasters flank the rounded corner. The ground storey towards Cooper Street is rusticated with no division between the bays, although a pilaster-strip appears at the right-hand end.

The main entrance to number 1 is a segmental-headed doorway with a grey stone doorstep. The door is half-glazed, with a solid moulded panel below and glazing with margin-panes above; the deep fanlight also features margin-panes framing a round centre panel. To its right sits a shop front flanked by pilasters with incised Greek decoration on the shafts and foliated capitals. Above is an entablature with dentilled architrave and a cornice eccentrically supported above the pilasters by shaped brackets. A late 20th-century aluminium-framed display window has been inserted here. To the left of the doorway is a flat-headed domestic window with voussoirs incised in the render and a plain wooden frame with transom.

The corner shop (number 55 Mill Street) features display windows facing both streets, with pilasters at either end and columns flanking a recessed doorway on the splayed corner. The entablature above has a frieze decorated with raised panels, each bearing a pair of guttae. The display windows have transom-lights and turned glazing-bars, and glazed double shop-doors with solid moulded panels at the bottom. The doorstep is inscribed "REED'S CAFE".

Number 54 displays a good 20th-century shop front with bowed display windows.

Number 53 retains an original shop front with pilasters matching those in Cooper Street and an entablature flanked by shaped brackets of the same type. The display window has been altered, but an older triple-shafted column supports the lintel. A glazed shop door to the left has a solid moulded bottom panel.

In the upper storeys, the right-hand bay to Cooper Street contains three segmental-headed windows in each storey, with the middle ones wider than the exterior ones and emphasised by a small triangular gable with moulded and modillioned bargeboards that breaks the line of the eaves-cornice. Windows in the other bays are generally flat-headed with narrow recessed surrounds. The second-storey window at number 54 differs in being a canted wooden bay, probably added in the late 19th century; it is flanked by raised rectangular-shaped panels which are themselves flanked by narrow pilasters supporting a moulded cornice.

All windows throughout feature barred sashes: 8-paned at number 1 Cooper Street, 6-paned elsewhere, except that the upper sashes in the third-storey windows at numbers 53–55 Mill Street are 3-paned. The side-windows at number 1 Cooper Street and the side-lights in the bay window at number 54 Mill Street are 2-paned.

A narrow entablature with modillioned cornice runs at eaves-level around both fronts, though the cornice is missing at numbers 1 Cooper Street and 55 Mill Street.

The interior was not fully inspected. However, in 1988 number 1 Cooper Street contained an original wooden staircase rising to the first floor, featuring cut strings with shaped step-ends, thin square balusters linked in pairs by horizontal bars, and a rounded handrail dipping at the bottom to form a scroll above a low, lily-patterned iron newel. The ground-storey stair compartment had a groined ceiling finished at the rear with an elliptical arch springing from moulded imposts. At the first-floor landing is a round-headed window with horizontal glazing-bars and margin-panes containing red and blue glass.