Silvester House

Silvester House is an early 20th-century house with a shop, located on West side of Buttgarden Street, Bideford. The front of the building is solid rendered, with a slated roof featuring pierced, crested red ridge tiles. It is two-and-a-half storeys high, with a single-window range.

The ground floor retains its original shop front, featuring flanking pilasters that support tall, bracketed blocks with the house number inset at the top. A glazed fascia inscribed in gilt letters "T. L. HAMLYN & SON" runs between these blocks. To the left, a plain display window is canted inwards, accommodating a shop door with "SIGN WRITERS. GILDERS" inscribed in gilt letters above. The half-glazed house door has a solid moulded panel at the bottom and a fanlight with the name "SILVESTER HOUSE" in gilt letters within a gilt border containing red, green, and black flowers. A large Art Nouveau-style painting depicting a woman in a dress and a quotation from Tennyson, signed “BERT HAMLYN” and dated 1912, is displayed in the left reveal. A coloured, patterned mosaic floor with the name HAMLYN is at its base.

The second storey is flanked by panelled pilaster-strips with scrolls at the top, supporting a cornice that extends across the front. A central bay window has shaped bases and wooden casements with transom lights featuring coloured glass; the sills and transoms meet the pilasters. The third or half-storey has raised quoins. At the top is a prominent eaves cornice on large, shaped brackets, broken in the centre by a tall dormer-gable with projecting eaves and bargeboards. The dormer has a two-light casement window with a transom light featuring coloured glass, and decorative mock timber framing on the gable face above.

The shop interior retains original decorated panelling, iron fireplaces with coloured tile surrounds and a ceiling at the front that appears to have coloured paper decoration; the rear ceiling is patterned plaster or papier-mache. The upper storeys were not inspected.