Warmington'S Garage

Warmington’s Garage is a large house, now operating as a garage with flats above, dating to the mid-19th century. It is said to contain substantial portions of an earlier house built on the site in 1692. The front facade is of solid rendered Italianate style, with a slate roof and rendered chimneys on each side of the front range, featuring moulded caps decorated with a large-scale egg-and-dart pattern.

The building has an L-shaped plan, comprising a double-depth front range and a rear wing to the left. A staircase is positioned right of centre in the rear section of the front range.

The house is three storeys high and has a three-window front. The ground storey has been extensively altered to create a garage, although original structural walls remain and the original central doorway has been preserved. This doorway has a half-glazed door with two solid moulded panels. A moulded cornice runs at sill-level on the second storey. The upper floor windows are three-light, single-light, and middle windows that are likely later replacements with horns. Pilasters flank the three-light windows and support entablatures. Eared architraves and bracketed sills feature on the third-storey windows. All windows are sash windows; the upper sashes of the three-light windows have curved top corners. A grand top entablature is present, along with a dentilled architrave and bracketed cornice.

The interior was only partially inspected. The staircase, within the front range, is of mid-19th century design up to the first floor, featuring ornate cast-iron balusters and a continuous wooden handrail. Above this, the wooden strings are pulvinated and likely date from the 1692 house, with thin, square balusters of the 19th century. According to J R L Thorp, further rooms contained a moulded plaster cornice, a good bolection chimney piece, and particularly good joinery and plaster detail.

The building occupies a site originally laid out by the Feoffees of the Long Bridge (now the Bideford Bridge Trust), and was first leased in 1692 to Thomas Hammet, a merchant.