The Stores

SX 6493 - 6593 SOUTH TAWTON SOUTH ZEAL

8/244 The Stores

GV II

Shop with accommodation, former merchants house. C16 and C17 with superficial modernisations since. Plastered cob and stone rubble; stone rubble stacks topped with C19 and C20 brick; slate roof with pierced crested ridge tiles, formerly thatch. Plan and development: 3-room-and-through-passage plan town house occupying the full frontage of a medieval burgage plot and built along the street facing south-west and built down the slope. Inner room at the uphill left end is heated by a rear lateral stack. The hall is heated by a large-axial stack backing onto the passage. The service end room, now the shop, has an end stack backing onto the adjoining house. Because the roof structure was replaced in the early C20 it is impossible here to outline the early devlopment of the house. Nevertheless it seems probable that the house originated as some kind of open hall house. However nothing shows earlier than a mid C17 house with a floored over hall and fireplace. 2 storeys throughout. Exterior: the front is plastered to look like coursed rusticated ashlar. Regular but not symmetrical 4-window front of early C20 8 (6/2) sashes and, on the right end, a C20 plate glass shop window. Front doorway to original passage is right of centre and contains a C20 part-glazed door. The roof is hipped to right and half- hipped to left. Interior: is largely the result of C19 and C20 modernisations. However the historic plan survives and, it appears, most of it hidden behind C19 and C20 plaster. For instance, the shop in the lower end has a plastered over axial beam and the fireplace is blocked. The hall however appears to be wholly the result of a mid C17 refurbishment. The doorway from the passage has a chamfered oak frame containing a mid C17 door; a plank door hung on strap hinges with studded and moulded coverstrips producing a panelled front. The hall fireplace is blocked. The crossbeam however is ovolo-moulded with runout stops and the doorways to the inner room and staircase are also ovolo-moulded with roll stops. The inner room ceiling may be earlier and has a plain soffit-chamfered axial beam with joists of large scantling, the oak floorboards above are held in place by oak pegs rather than nails). The stair rising from the upper end of the hall is unusually wide. Its thought to be mid C17 in date. Only C20 carpentry shows on the first floor and the roof is also early C20. The Stores probably has earlier features than those exposed. South Zeal is an important medieval market town in south Devon in which a group of heavily disguised C16 and C17 houses form a group with the Oxenham Arms (q.v) and Chapel of St. Mary (q.v).

Listing NGR: SX6510993577