9, Market Street

This is a house located at 9 Market Street in Watchet, dating from the early 17th century. It has been altered in the 18th and 19th centuries and restored around 2000. The building is made of limewashed rendered stone rubble and features a clay Bridgwater tile roof with gabled ends. There is a gable-end stack with a later brick shaft.

The house has a two-room plan, with a smaller unheated room on the left (north) that includes a later corner fireplace, and a hall/kitchen on the right (south) that has a large fireplace with an oven and a winder staircase beside the stack leading to two chambers above.

The exterior is two storeys high and has an almost symmetrical two-window west front. It features late 19th to early 20th century two-light casements with glazing bars. The central doorway has a panelled door and a modern stone rubble porch. At the rear (east), there is a two-light chamfered wooden frame stair window to the left, now within a later single-storey wing.

Inside, the left (north) room has a ceiling and a later corner fireplace. The hall/kitchen on the right (south) boasts a deeply chamfered cross-beam with hollow step stops and exposed unchamfered joists. It has a substantial framed partition and a large stone fireplace with a renewed timber bressumer and an oven that has been converted into a smoking chamber, now functioning as a cupboard with a plank door. The winder staircase next to the stack features a rebated and chamfered frame with mason's mitres and a two-light chamfered wooden frame stair window with carpenter's mitres. The hall/kitchen chamber contains a small stone fireplace with a renewed bressumer. There is a closed truss between the two chambers, which is not directly above the partition below, featuring trenched purlins and a trench for a diagonally-set ridgepiece. The roof over the unheated room chamber is clean, with common rafters and a replaced ridgepiece.