MEM22312 - Number Seven, High Street, Dulverton (Building)

A two storey house with a plain, rendered façade with a projecting shop front. It may be a late 17th or 18th Century rebuild of a medieval or early post-medieval building that occupied this plot and that of the adjacent property.

At the lower end of the High Street, on the south facing elevation, there is a sequence of late 18th-19th Century, two storey, traditional shop fronts. The first floor sash windows have narrow glazing bars. [1] The building was subject to rapid survey in 2011. It is a two storey house with a plain, rendered façade with a projecting shop front and a vehicular entrance under an archway at the northeastern end. The end elevation of the house has two large stone-built chimney stacks, the rear of which has the remains of a short length of wall descending from it that may relate to the roofline of the adjoining houses (nos. 3 and 5) that may have previously risen to a higher level. The building forms an L-plan and the rear was not examined. The interior of the ground floor has been gutted to form the shop but the rear kitchen survives and contains a large fireplace of uncertain date and a 19th Century six-panelled door in the east wall. The entry contains a sawn-off beam end with the remains of a chamfer or run-out stop visible in the party wall with the adjoining property, suggesting the existence of early fabric and that the original building had a lower first floor level than at present. The first floor level plan is intact and the rooms appear wholly of 19th Century date, though one undressed timber beam, which might be earlier, crosses the ceiling of a rear room. The roof structure is early and supported by very crude softwood trusses, without collars and with the principals crossed and bolted together at the top. The character of the carpentry suggests a very late 17th or 18th Century date. However, the northwest gable wall contains a steep triangular gable of cob under later masonry supporting the present roof timbers. It is suggested this may indicate an earlier building with a lower roofline and lower internal floor levels, of a medieval or early post-medieval date. Further evidence for this building may be concealed by later plaster or built into the floors and partitions of the present building. Survey of the adjacent building (Lance Nicholson's, MEM22313) suggests the medieval building actually spanned both plots, with a cob wall division. The building may then have been rebuilt in the late 17th or 18th Century, then modernised in the 19th and 20th Centuries, when the staircase was reconfigured in its present form and the shop enlarged to its present dimensions. [2]