The Post Office

The Post Office is a mid-16th century house, with later 16th and 17th century alterations, rearranged in the 18th or 19th century, and modernised with a circa 1980 rear block. The construction is likely granite stone rubble, possibly with cob, with granite stacks topped with 20th-century brick, and a thatched roof.

The house has a three-room-and-through-passage plan facing north-east onto the street. However, the original layout is not entirely clear. The inner room at the right end has an end stack, possibly inserted in the 19th or 20th century. The hall, now used as the Post Office, formerly had a rear lateral stack, which was removed in the 20th century. A small inner room at the left end has an end stack backing onto the adjacent house. A 20th-century rear block extension projects. The house initially appears to have a conventional late medieval layout, but some of the evidence is confusing. It seems to have started as an open hall house, with the roof over the inner room showing soot from an open hearth fire. A fireplace in the hall, likely late 16th or early 17th century, was floored over in the mid-17th century. The house is now two storeys.

The exterior has an irregular four-window front of 19th and 20th-century casements, with only the oldest retaining glazing bars. Two front doorways are present – the passage front doorway (to the house) is left of centre, and a secondary doorway inserted into the hall/post office is right of centre; both have 20th-century doors. The roof is hipped to the right and left, blending into the roof of the adjacent house.

The interior is largely the result of 19th and 20th-century modernisation, but the basic structure appears mostly 16th and 17th century. A plastered upper passage screen, said to contain remains of an oak plank-and-muntin screen, exists. In the hall, a curiously one-sided moulded mid-17th century axial beam is present. The inner room lacks carpentry detail. The service end room has a granite ashlar fireplace and a soffit-chamfered axial beam, both likely 17th century. The roof is of true cruck trusses, though one principal rests on a vertical post to the front. The roof bay over the inner room is sooted from an open hearth, the truss between this and the hall roof is closed, and the rest of the roof is clean. South Zeal is notable as one of the few Devon boroughs where a significant number of 16th and 17th century houses have survived.