Conservative Club

BIDEFORD

SS4526 BRIDGELAND STREET 842-1/5/40 (South side) 08/11/49 No.23 Conservative Club

GV II

House, now club. Possibly late C18, remodelled early/mid C19. Solid rendered front. Slate roof. Rendered chimney on each gable-end. 4-square plan with central entrance-passage; rear centre stair compartment with curved, projecting rear wall; long rear wing to left, age uncertain; rear curtilage to right now built over with ballroom. 2 storeys; 3-window range. Ground storey has round-arched centre doorway with reeded architrave having a keyblock; inner jambs of architrave have attached pilasters incised with key-pattern. Inner porch with groined vault having a foliated boss at its apex; beyond this an inner doorway with 6-panelled door and pilasters like those at the front. Flanking the doorway 2 large segmental bow windows of 3 lights each; between the lights and at either side pilasters incised with key-pattern, these supporting an entablature with paired brackets to the cornice. Raised band between storeys. All windows have 6-paned sashes. Deeply-projecting eaves-cornice with paired brackets. INTERIOR: ground floor only inspected. At rear of entrance-passage a doorway with semi-circular fanlight having patterned glazing. Wooden geometrical staircase; slender turned balusters with square necking-pieces; shaped step-ends; handrail voluted at foot of stair. In the stair-compartment wall between ground and first floors 2 round-headed semi-circular niches; tall, round-arched, small-paned window. Front left-hand room has enriched cornice and chandelier-boss. Other ground-floor rooms completely altered in late C20. The first Bridge Feoffees' lease of this site was of 2 stables in 1701. The later documentation is confusing, but the earliest firm reference to a house is in an 1839 lease to Susannah Glynn, spinster. (Notes by Bideford Historic Buildings Survey).

Listing NGR: SS4537726790