No 8 And 10 And Attached Outbuildings, Walls And Railings

This is a pair of houses, originally built in the mid-18th century, located on West Street in Ilminster. They were refronted around 1840 and extended in the late 19th century. One of the houses was converted into a shop around 1935. The building is now used as a single house and two shops.

The exterior is constructed from Ham Hill stone ashlar, with rubble stone to the rear. The roof is slate, and features stone stacks located centrally, to the right and a truncated stack to the left. The design is based on a double-depth plan with 19th-century extensions at the rear. The façade is symmetrical, with three windows in each house. No. 8, to the right, has a central staircase plan. A moulded cornice sits below a parapet wall, with pilasters featuring Tuscan-style moulded cornices to the centre and sides. There are floating cornices and moulded window architraves, along with recessed panels to the aprons below the first-floor windows. The windows in No. 8 are 6/6-pane sashes with margin lights, and the ground floor has a platband above banded rustication. Steps, curved to the sides, lead to a 20th-century six-panel door set in a moulded architrave with a pediment. The shops to the left share a central 20th-century door flanked by plate-glass windows, with a reeded moulding to the fascia.

The interior of the right-hand house (No. 8) retains some mid-18th-century features, including torus moulding to some skirtings, wide floorboards, and egg-and-dart moulding to the cornice of the front left room. Otherwise, the interior is characteristic of around 1840, with elliptical arches and a Regency-style reeded fireplace on the first floor. A vaulted cellar with stone steps and a flagstone floor is also present. Originally, water from the front parapet was ducted beneath the floor of the upper right room to a pipe in the centre of the right gable end. The left-hand house (No. 10) has a central hall with a 1840 staircase featuring a wreathed handrail and curtail step. It also has some dentilled cornices and an elliptical arch on the ground floor’s left side, although it has otherwise been altered.

Subsidiary features include a Ham Hill stone plinth enclosing a forecourt to No. 8, which curves inward (but not upward) toward the door and supports spearhead railings with urn finials. To the rear are tall limestone rubble walls and outbuildings with brick dressings. No. 10 has four steps, curved to the sides, with widely-spaced railings but no forecourt.