53, East Street

This is a late medieval house with a shop, extended in the late 17th or 18th century and remodelled in the early or mid-19th century. It is located in East Street, Ashburton. The front range is built of rendered stone rubble, with cob and timber-framing to the rear wing. It has a slate roof with rendered chimneys. The original layout comprised a two-room front range with a central through-passage; the right-hand room was part of a former open hall that originally extended across the site of number 55. A 19th-century staircase is located behind the left-hand room. A two-room rear wing is attached to the left, with the front section originally an open-fronted cart linhay.

The front has two windows on each storey. It features a lean-to porch and shop window on the left, and a two-pane sash window to the right. Upper-floor windows are two-light wooden casements with three panes per light, all set in recessed box frames. A bracketed eaves-cornice with a light moulding runs along the front.

Inside, stud-and-panel screens divide the passage; these are boarded on one side and have plain studding on the reverse. Above the right-hand screen is an internal jetty, originally projecting into the open hall, with rounded joist ends that have been cut back. A 16th or early 17th century granite chimneypiece with roughly shaped jambs and lintel is located in the back wall of this room. The inside cheeks of the jambs are incised to imitate ashlar, a rare feature in Devon. The left-hand room has a blocked window in the party wall, suggesting the building was originally free-standing on that side.

The roof retains one heavily smoke-blackened late medieval truss with a lap-jointed collar and shaped ends, a common style in Devon from the late 16th and 17th centuries. Threaded purlins remain, along with one blackened example. A possibly 18th-century truss with a face-pegged collar is located at the left-hand end. The cart linhay has two round stone rubble columns. The rear wing appears to have originally been a ground-floor cellar, with a large fireplace and renewed wooden lintel above. Roof trusses throughout the wing have collars pegged to their faces.