4, North Street

No. 4 North Street is a house and shop that is believed to have been the Mermaid Inn in the 17th century. It has late medieval origins and was remodeled in the 16th or 17th century, with a mid-19th century shop front. The building features a rendered solid front and a granite archway, topped with a slated roof. There are stone-rubble chimneys with tapered caps on each gable end.

The structure is two storeys high with a garret and has two widely spaced windows. On the right side of the ground floor, there is a chamfered, pointed granite arch that recesses a studded plank door framed in 17th-century wood, featuring ovolo and hollow-moulded details with urn stops. To the left of the arch is a blocked doorway, now a two-paned shop window, with lower jamb stones made of chamfered granite and a relieving arch of slatestone voussoirs. The rest of the ground floor consists of a shop front with a half-glazed door flanked by four-paned canted display windows. An entablature runs across the entire shop front, topped with a name board and blindcase.

The upper storey has eight-paned sash windows set in recessed box-frames, located in wider blocked openings with the ends of former hood-moulds visible. There are two pent-roofed dormers, with the lower parts cutting into the top of the wall; the left dormer features a small-paned Yorkshire sash, while the right has a three-light wood casement with three panes per light. Town houses with medieval exterior details are very rare in Devon. Historically, in 1646, General Fairfax is traditionally believed to have made his headquarters here during the Civil War. Additionally, in 1637, Lawrence Blundell placed a £4 per annum rent charge on the Mermaid Inn, payable to Ashburton Grammar School.