Nos 34 And 35 And Attached Outbuildings To Rear

Nos. 34 and 35 and attached outbuildings to rear, Chapel Street, Buckfastleigh

A pair of houses dating to around the 1830s, with attached outbuildings to the rear built circa 1880s. The main buildings are colourwashed and stuccoed with the left end slate-hung. They have a slate roof, gabled at the right end and half-hipped at the left, with stacks featuring rendered shafts. The outbuildings formerly served as a builder's yard, offices and store-rooms, and comprise partly local grey limestone rubble with some brick, and partly timber-framed and weatherboarded structures with Turnerised pegslate roof and a brick stack shaft.

The main blocks follow a double-depth rectangular plan with a carriageway entrance to the left. The outbuildings are arranged in a U-plan range, with the west range attached to the rear wing of No. 34 and a passage through the south range providing access to the north end of the court. The parallel east and west ranges create a narrow walkway between them. A cartway through the front of the house originally gave access from Fore Street.

The front elevation presents three storeys in an asymmetrical four-window arrangement. Recessed front doors sit left of centre: No. 34's original door has six fielded panels and a deep overlight with geometric glazing bars and margin panes, while No. 35's door is glazed above the middle rail with a plainer overlight. Both doors have stuccoed floating cornices on shallow stuccoed consoles and plain horizontal panels above the lintels, with blind windows above. A segmental-headed carriageway to the right has paired vertical boarded doors. The ground floor has two windows, the first floor three, and the second floor four—mostly early 19th-century 16-pane hornless sashes, though the ground-floor left has been altered to an 8 over 1-pane window, a 20-pane timber sash appears at second-floor right, and a later horned 16-pane timber sash has been inserted into a loft opening made up of vertical boards on the second floor left. A wrought-iron bracket on the front once supported a hanging sign, now gone.

The rear elevation of No. 34 features a slate-hung second floor with one ground- and one first-floor sash window, and a section of brick walling above the cartway. The rear wing has two front doors, with a ground-floor 16-pane sash and 2-light casements elsewhere.

The outbuildings' west and east ranges display weatherboarded first floors to the courtyard with sets of 2- and 3-light mullioned windows fitted with lapped glass. The west range has a lower roofline than the main house, with a stone rubble west wall, two ground-floor doorways and one window, plus a first-floor window and a loft doorway with a 20th-century door. The east range has a brick east wall with two ground- and two first-floor windows, and three windows on the first-floor east side. The south range, parallel to the house and opening onto the yard, is constructed of stone rubble with brick dressings, with the roof hipped at the west end and half-hipped at the right end. The south side features an outshut with catslide roof to the left, an archway through to the yard alongside, and one ground- and one first-floor boarded window, with the right end corner canted and windowed.

The interiors of the houses were not inspected but may retain features of interest. The outbuildings contain plain, functional spaces with exposed joists and 19th-century tie beam trusses featuring iron King-posts. This represents a rare survival of a group of late Victorian small-scale light industrial buildings in the centre of a town, and an important example of rear plot development in a settlement that retains its medieval layout of long rear plots behind the houses fronting the main street.