Description

BIDEFORD

SS4526 BRIDGELAND STREET
842-1/5/29 (North side)
No.11

GV II

Large house, now converted into a shop. c1792. Solid rendered
walls. Slate roofs, the front range hipped with centre valley.
No chimneys visible externally, but set in thick wall between
the front and back rooms.
Plan: 3 rooms wide and 2 rooms deep, with staircase in place
of rear middle room; front rooms entered from stair through a
small lobby; rear wing to right.
3 storeys; rear wing 2 storeys. Remodelled front of 3-window
range, the outer windows in the upper storeys having 3 lights
each. Ground storey has late C20 display windows, set in older
moulded surrounds with moulded cornice. Upper storeys have
box-framed sashes with horns. Modillioned eaves-cornice, its
upper part apparently altered. Old photograph (taken before
1869) shows the front with 3-storey canted bay windows.
Rear wall of main range (visible from the Rope Walk) has
barred sash-windows and a tall, round-arched, small-paned
stair window.
INTERIOR: all partitions removed from ground storey of main
range, except for wooden open-well staircase, which rises to
third storey, and has cut strings with shaped step-ends, the
treads with moulded nosings;
slender turned balusters, 2 to a tread, with square
necking-pieces; moulded handrail ramped up over plain-shafted
column-newels; balustrades on both sides of first flight,
scrolled at foot of stair; against the solid outer walls of
flights to second storey is a half-handrail with half-newels,
but no balusters.
Second-storey rooms have 6-panelled doors with raised moulding
on the panels; 2-fillet ovolo-moulded frames. Left-hand front
room has original pink and grey marble chimneypiece with
triple flanking shafts supporting entablature with white
marble plaque in centre of frieze, carved with bunch of
grapes; plain cornice-shelf; cast-iron grate with surround and
hearth of black-and-white patterned tiles (probably late C19).
Right-hand front room has original wood chimneypiece with
moulded architrave and dentilled cornice. Similar
chimneypieces in rear third-storey rooms, but without the
dentils. All 3 chimneypieces have cast-iron grates.
Third-storey rooms have 2-panelled doors. Rear wing not
inspected.
This house replaced the eastern end of a still larger house
(built in 1693), the remainder of which now forms No 12
Bridgeland Street (qv). The Great House, as it was then
called, was leased in 1784 to John Kimber of Bideford,
esquire, 'who converted the same into Two Dwelling-houses'. In
1792 No 11 was described as 'the new dwelling house lately
built by the said John Kimber now in the possession of Abraham
Whiteacre Esquire'.
(Bideford Bridge Trust, Survey: A1/10; Goaman M: Bideford in
Old Picture Postcards: 1982-: PLATE 54).

Listing NGR: SS4538026829

External Links

• Historic England Listing
• Wikidata Q26638016

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.

Recommended Books

• 
  Period Property Manual (New Ed)
• 
  Suffolk: West: The Buildings of England (Pevsner Architectural Guides) (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Northumberland (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Devon (Pevsner Buildings of England)
• 
  Old House Eco Handbook: A Practical Guide to Retrofitting for Energy-Efficiency & Sustainability
• 
  The Listed Buildings and Other Principal Structures at the Royal Gunpowder Mills Waltham Abbey