Number 77 Including Gate Piers

Number 77 is a house at the end of a row, now a doctor's surgery, dating to the early 18th century. It is constructed of Flemish bond brickwork with stone dressings, and has a tile roof with brick stacks. The plan is a compact square central entry block to a hipped roof, with access from a courtyard to a stair hall flanked by single rooms on each side, which are now partitioned.

The exterior is two storeys, attic and basement, with a three-window facade to Church Street. It features a 16-pane sash window to a flat-roofed dormer, offset to the right, above 12-pane sashes in face boxes with brick voussoirs and a stone key under a plain rendered band and on stone cills. The house has two basement grilles. Other details include a plinth, alternating V-joint stone quoins, a moulded eaves cornice with modillions, and a return front, in the courtyard, with three gabled dormers having two-light casements. The courtyard front has quoined pilasters, a central tripartite light in haunched voussoirs with a keystone above a 12-pane sash, and a fielded panel door with partial glazing, a fanlight with a moulded pediment hood on brackets. The ground floor to the left has a large 16-pane sash with a stone lintel and cill, and a series of blank recessed panels with segmental heads and keystones, with a plain mid band. A large brick stack is located to the valley, right, and rear left. The back of the house is in painted brick, with a large 16-pane sash on the first floor, right, and a 20th-century lean-to extension.

The interior features an entrance hall with fielded panelling and a dogleg stair with turned balusters, square newels, a solid string, and a heavy moulded handrail. The front room, originally full width, now has an inserted partition and fielded panelling. A full-height panel is positioned diagonally across the corner adjacent to the entrance hall, framed by fluted Doric pilasters with a triglyph frieze, and in the other half of the room is an 18th-century niche cupboard. The doors are generally 6-panel fielded in moulded architraves, with fielded panels in the reveals at both floors. An octagonal roof-light illuminates the stairwell. On the first floor, at the back, is a kitchen with a corner fireplace, and small 18th-century fielded-panel doors. The attic level has not been inspected.

The building is accompanied by a pair of square brick gate piers with moulded stone caps on brick plinths. There are plank gates and a lower single pedestrian opening with brick nib walls and coping, on a single sandstone step with a nosing. This is a fine early 18th-century town house. The unusual right-angle plan, with a courtyard providing access, is comparable to the late 17th-century merchant’s houses at Topsham in Devon.