The Stores

The Stores is a shop with accommodation, originally a merchants’ house, dating to the 16th and 17th centuries, with later modernisations. It is constructed of plastered cob and stone rubble, with stone rubble stacks topped with 19th and 20th-century brick, and a slate roof with pierced crested ridge tiles, formerly thatched. The building occupies a full medieval burgage plot and faces southwest along the street, built down the slope. It originally had a 3-room and through-passage plan.

The exterior has been plastered to resemble coursed rusticated ashlar. The front has a regular, though not symmetrical, 4-window arrangement with early 20th-century 8-pane sashes (6/2) and a 20th-century plate glass shop window on the right end. A 20th-century part-glazed door is located to the right of centre, giving access to the original passage. The roof is hipped to the right and half-hipped to the left.

The interior has been largely modernised in the 19th and 20th centuries. However, the original plan is still discernible, mostly obscured by later plasterwork. In the shop area, an axial beam is plastered over, and the fireplace is blocked. The hall appears to date to a mid-17th-century refurbishment. A mid-17th-century oak door, with strap hinges, studded and moulded coverstrips, is within a chamfered oak frame in the doorway from the passage. The hall fireplace is blocked, but the crossbeam is ovolo-moulded with run-out stops. Doorways to the inner room and staircase are similarly ovolo-moulded with roll stops. The ceiling of the inner room may be earlier and features a plain, soffit-chamfered axial beam with large scantling joists; the large oak floorboards above are held in place by oak pegs. The staircase, rising from the upper end of the hall, is unusually wide, and is thought to be mid-17th century. Only 20th-century carpentry is visible on the first floor, and the roof is also early 20th-century.

The Stores is situated within South Zeal, a historic market town in south Devon where a group of disguised 16th and 17th-century buildings form a group with the Oxenham Arms and the Chapel of St. Mary.