Stable House Gallery, Spring Cottage And Stable House

Stable House Gallery, Spring Cottage and Stable House

This range contains a house and shop with two cottages. It may originally have been a single house, though the cottages could represent an early addition intended as separate dwellings. The building dates from the late 16th or 17th century, with late 19th or early 20th century additions. The structure is built of stone rubble, painted at the front, with cob rising from sill-level in the second storey upwards. The roof is thatched.

The building displays two stone chimneysstacks with granite ashlar tops on the ridge, offset to the right and projecting from the right-hand gable wall. These have weatherings and caps made of projecting stone-courses. A smaller rendered chimneystack sits on the left-hand gable. The original plan is uncertain, but the left-hand side functioned as a shop from at least the late 19th century, with the right-hand end divided off in the 20th century. The presence of two fireplaces suggests the original arrangement comprised two rooms, with a possible third small room to the left of the shop, which also contains a fireplace of some age.

The building is two storeys with single-storey additions. The front elevation is seven windows wide, with the right-hand section (containing three windows) clearly being of different build. The left-hand section features a four-panelled door with a brass dolphin-shaped knocker, sheltered by a late 19th century gabled wood porch. To its right is a late 19th century (certainly before 1890) projecting shop front with a tiled pent roof. The second-storey windows throughout are 19th century wood casements of three lights with rectangular leaded panes, much of the glass being old. The right-hand section has a two-light wood casement window with eight panes per light at the left-hand end of the ground storey, followed by two late 19th century four-panelled doors. In the second storey, the windows are three-light wood casements with leaded panes matching the left-hand section.

All three openings in the ground storey display late 16th or 17th century chamfered wood lintels with bar stops, the bars having a full pyramid shape. The second storey windows have similar wood lintels but with plain run-out stops. The right-hand gable contains a single ground-storey window to the right of the chimney, a wood casement of two lights with leaded panes and a chamfered wood lintel with bar-stops matching those in the front wall.

Interior features include a centrally-placed upper-floor beam in the shop, chamfered with scroll-stops having two notches. Over the right-hand wall, inserted in the 20th century, is a chamfered beam with run-out stops. In the rear wall to the left is a large fireplace with big plain granite jamb-stones on the left side; the right side is concealed by plaster and inserted stonework. The fireplace has a chamfered wood lintel with scroll-stops. At the back stands a large oven with a brick opening and brick domed roof; the base and sides, however, are constructed of large stone blocks. To the left of the fireplace is a rounded stair turret with a thick wood newel post. Between storeys is a late 16th or 17th century wood window of two lights with flat splay mullions. The former right-hand end of the shop, now part of Spring Cottage, has a wide fireplace with a chamfered wood lintel having run-out stops, with another wide fireplace backing on to it, this one having a plain wood lintel.

The upper storey of Spring Cottage and the whole of the cottage at the north-west end were not inspected internally. The roof of the left-hand section, including the left side of Spring Cottage, is old and of difficult access. A late 16th or early 17th century truss in the centre is clearly visible, having plain feet set in the wall-tops and a halved collar with shaped ends. Two other old trusses are just discernible to the north-west of it.

The building appears to have been called Staple Cottage in 1615, according to information derived from the Wadham manorial survey held in Somerset Record Office and from conversations with older residents of Lustleigh.