11, Bridgeland Street

BIDEFORD

SS4526 BRIDGELAND STREET 842-1/5/29 (North side) No.11

GV II

Large house, now converted into a shop. c1792. Solid rendered walls. Slate roofs, the front range hipped with centre valley. No chimneys visible externally, but set in thick wall between the front and back rooms. Plan: 3 rooms wide and 2 rooms deep, with staircase in place of rear middle room; front rooms entered from stair through a small lobby; rear wing to right. 3 storeys; rear wing 2 storeys. Remodelled front of 3-window range, the outer windows in the upper storeys having 3 lights each. Ground storey has late C20 display windows, set in older moulded surrounds with moulded cornice. Upper storeys have box-framed sashes with horns. Modillioned eaves-cornice, its upper part apparently altered. Old photograph (taken before 1869) shows the front with 3-storey canted bay windows. Rear wall of main range (visible from the Rope Walk) has barred sash-windows and a tall, round-arched, small-paned stair window. INTERIOR: all partitions removed from ground storey of main range, except for wooden open-well staircase, which rises to third storey, and has cut strings with shaped step-ends, the treads with moulded nosings; slender turned balusters, 2 to a tread, with square necking-pieces; moulded handrail ramped up over plain-shafted column-newels; balustrades on both sides of first flight, scrolled at foot of stair; against the solid outer walls of flights to second storey is a half-handrail with half-newels, but no balusters. Second-storey rooms have 6-panelled doors with raised moulding on the panels; 2-fillet ovolo-moulded frames. Left-hand front room has original pink and grey marble chimneypiece with triple flanking shafts supporting entablature with white marble plaque in centre of frieze, carved with bunch of grapes; plain cornice-shelf; cast-iron grate with surround and hearth of black-and-white patterned tiles (probably late C19). Right-hand front room has original wood chimneypiece with moulded architrave and dentilled cornice. Similar chimneypieces in rear third-storey rooms, but without the dentils. All 3 chimneypieces have cast-iron grates. Third-storey rooms have 2-panelled doors. Rear wing not inspected. This house replaced the eastern end of a still larger house (built in 1693), the remainder of which now forms No 12 Bridgeland Street (qv). The Great House, as it was then called, was leased in 1784 to John Kimber of Bideford, esquire, 'who converted the same into Two Dwelling-houses'. In 1792 No 11 was described as 'the new dwelling house lately built by the said John Kimber now in the possession of Abraham Whiteacre Esquire'. (Bideford Bridge Trust, Survey: A1/10; Goaman M: Bideford in Old Picture Postcards: 1982-: PLATE 54).

Listing NGR: SS4538026829