Description

SS5147
853-1/6/68

ILFRACOMBE
HIGH STREET
(North side)
No.31

GV
II

Shop with living accommodation above. Mid to late C19. Gothick
design. MATERIALS: yellow brick with dressings of stone, red
and black brick. Roof not visible from street. Red brick
chimney on left side wall.
EXTERIOR: 4 storeys. 3-windows-wide, the middle window
narrower than the rest. Good shopfront, probably a late C19
insertion. Flanking wooden pilasters, the left-hand one with a
pair of small bulbous Ionic columns on top; entablature above
with blindcase incorporated. Display window has slender shafts
with enriched scrolled capitals. Glazed shop door to right
with shaped panels; scrolled pediment above set against the
base of a patterned fanlight. Across the whole shopfront,
beneath the entablature, is a fringe of scrollwork.
Upper storeys flanked by pilaster strips; bands of red and
black brick at each floor level, sunk red brick panels between
and at either side of the windows. Outer windows have
4-centred arches of red and black brick and stone, the middle
windows similar but round-arched. Moulded stone impost-bands.
All windows have plain sashes. Modillioned eaves-cornice.
INTERIOR not inspected, except that the shop has a ceiling of
moulded papier-mache. On the reveal of the house entrance, to
the left of the shopfront, is a painted-over plate with the
name of Allen T Hussell, architect and surveyor.
HISTORY: Hussell was a native of Ilfracombe (b.1870); he was
articled to WH Gould and had his own practice from the late
1890s. In 1909 he published a book, North Devon Churches, and
wrote a series of articles on Ilfracombe architecture in the
Ilfracombe Chronicle, May-Sept. 1937. He was also a composer
of popular songs, especially just after the First World War,
and a pianist. In 1912 he was engaged to play on a cruise ship
to the Amazon. His architectural works included Westway (1913)
at the entrance to Torrs Park and, in the 1890s, some of the
houses in Broad Park Avenue.
Part of a good roup of mostly later C19 commercial
architecture of a remarkably ambitious scale for a town of
this size.
(Lamplugh L: Ilfracombe, 1984: 7; 125-7; Transactions of the
Devonshire Association: 1946-: 45; Ilfracombe Chronicle,
28.5.1937: 3, 8; Devon Record Office: Devon Record Office:
R2458 add. No 1540; Ilfracombe Local Board of Health Planning
File: North Devon DC Planning Department: Ilfracombe Local
Board of Health Planning File: (on microfilm)).

Listing NGR: SS5178147605

External Links

• Historic England Listing
• Wikidata Q26498593

External links are from the relevant listing authority and, where applicable, Wikidata. Wikidata IDs may be related buildings as well as this specific building. If you want to add or update a link, you will need to do so by editing the Wikidata entry.

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