6-9, Higher Mill Lane

Row of cottages with probable tenter loft, dating from around 1800, built over a woollen mill complex at Buckfastleigh. The building is constructed from local grey limestone rubble with upper storeys clad in slate-hanging and a section of weatherboarding at the right end of the loft. The roof is covered with asbestos slate and gabled at the ends.

The building is a large rectangular structure fronting the road, comprising two storeys with a loft. The cottages contain two rooms on plan with front rooms heated. Above is an open tenter loft with access from the adjoining woollen mill to the right, which is probably slightly earlier. The right-hand cottage appears to have served as an office for the mill, accessed via a covered cartway. The exterior presents an asymmetrical five-window front. The right-hand cottage has a recessed half-glazed front door to the left and one two-light and one three-light ground-floor casement with four panes per light. Three first-floor sash windows date from the late 19th or 20th century, comprising two six-pane and one four-pane. The weatherboarded section to the loft includes an 18-pane fixed window.

The three cottages have plank doors with overlights. The right-hand cottage door is positioned to the right, while the left-hand cottages share adjacent doors flanked by two and three-light casements with three panes per light. Two first-floor sash windows from around 1800 have 16 panes. A loft blind sits on the first floor. The left return has a weatherboarded gable with one six-light loft window to the right having lapped glass; the left-hand window is blocked. Both windows have vertical bands of brick blocking below the sills.

The rear elevation displays a variety of windows including some four-pane lapped glass windows and four-pane horned sashes. The ground floor includes some eight-over-twelve pane sash windows.

Internally, the left-hand cottage contains simple details consistent with an around 1800 date, including a slightly chamfered cross beam on the ground floor, plastered-over cross beams on the ground and first floors, and what is probably an original stair to the rear. Two panelled first-floor doors survive, one with six panels of which the upper panels are fielded. A cast-iron 19th-century grate is present. The right-hand cottage contains a circa 1900 grate. The loft preserves graffiti.

The roof contains eight tie-beam trusses mortised at the apex with high halved collars and queen posts mortised into the principals and strapped onto them with iron shoes.

Historically, a mill occupied the site by at least 1730, documented as a tucking mill in 1760. In 1800, "Mills" were described as "lately erected on the site previously occupied by the tucking mill". By 1953 the mills had been re-used as a plating works. Samuel Berry, the owner in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, built himself a house at Buckfast Abbey using re-used building material.

Physical remains of the wool industry, which was crucial to the economy of Devon in the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries, are rare in the county. This arrangement with cottages below a tenter loft is unusual, with a parallel example in Chapel Street, Buckfastleigh. It represents an important surviving example of this industrial arrangement.