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No. 9, the Strand, Barnstaple - Terry Green and Colin Humphreys (Newsletter No 6 2003)

Recently Philip Milton, a member of NDAS, has opened a restaurant in the oldest building on the Barnstaple Strand and named it "The Old Custom House Restaurant". Philip Milton commisioned a study of the history and structure of No. 9, The Strand, of which the following is a digest.

Until the mid-sixteenth century the Barnstaple strand would have been literally the riverbank with nothing to hold back the occasional exceptionally high water. In 1555 the Mayor and Burgesses of Barnstaple petitioned Philip and Mary for a new charter, complaining that they had had to build a new wharf or quay 500 yards long and it had cost them £500 (Lamplugh 1983, 55). Although they received their charter, they would not have been able to develop the waterfront fully until they had purchased from Sir John Chichester, lord of the manor "all the void and waste grounds in or uppon the Kay and Strande and also all the new buyldings uppon the same Kay and Strand" (Exeter Archaeology 1998, 3). From the date of their purchase, the Barnstaple quayside and strand entered a development phase which would form the basis of the town's growing prosperity.

In fact, the erection of buildings on the northeast shore of the Taw must have begun in the medieval period. The chapel of St Nicholas, which formerly stood at the bottom of Crock Street or Cross Street, may be dated from its surviving depictions and descriptions to at least the 13th century. Until it was demolished in 1842, the chapel stood beside and partly over the West or Water Gate of the town,. With the medieval chapel incorporating a gate for ingress into the town, one may assume that, from the 13th century at least, a continuous line of buildings, if not a wall or bank, lined the river bank above the high tide-line. This line is represented today by the north-eastern side of the Strand in which location stands the building known most recently as Jenny Wren's Tea Shop, somewhat earlier as West View Stores, but for a portion, at least, of its history as the Old Custom House.

In 1642, William Wood, collector of customs dues, was granted a 60-year term in "a linney now the Custom Howse" at a rent of 4 shillings. He also occupied the adjacent Red Lion Inn. A documentary strand can be drawn which indicates a continuity from William Wood through to a nineteenth century tradition that the present building was the "old custom house". In 1827 Richard Rowe Metherell (whose ancestors had acquired it from Wood) together with Samuel Bremridge bought the property outright from the mayor and aldermen of Barnstaple. Between 1827 and 1871 it changed hands six times, descending to James Oliver who, in 1870, borrowed £340 against the value of "all that little house situate upon or near the quay of Barnstaple aforesaid and heretofore called or known by the name of Old Custom House...". In 1871 Oliver sold his property to Richard Bament, who held the property until 1905, when it was purchased by Alfred Ernest Hopper, a solicitor. In 1921 the property was sold to Arthur Robert Pow, a dairyman and renamed "West View, the Strand". In the hands of his sister Caroline Pow it became "West View Stores, then continued in use as a shop until 1995 when part of the shop became tea-rooms and the name became Jenny Wren's Tea Shoppe.

The building: The "Old Custom House" is the oldest building on the Strand, but appears to preserve only a part of a once larger building. A close examination of the building has unravelled phases of its development. (See the accompanying ground floor plan.) At least three phases of build are identifiable, the first of which would appear to have been a 3 cell building facing the Strand, probably built around the time of the reclamation of the quay. All that remains of this phase is the central room and possibly a cross passage. Features of the existing roof structure suggest a late C16th to early C17th date. The height of the beam carrying the first floor and its crude finish, may suggest that the ground floor was used for storage. Signs of an opening in the front wall may be remnants of an access to the first floor. Although only a single element of the structure remains, it is probable that in the late C17th to early C18th a first floor jetty was added to the front. This is probably also the date of a pier of thin Dutch(?) bricks supporting the floor, although this may be a later repair. The only remnant of the jetty is a section in front of the passage; however, the sill plate of the jetty has evidently been truncated suggesting that it once ran the full length of the building. Extant features suggest an early C19th extension to the north. It may also be that at this stage the end rooms of the earlier building were in some way detached and the jettied front was enclosed.

It appears, therefore, that initially the Old Custom House had a 3-cell cross-passage plan, the ground floor being used for storage. The C17th use of the term "linney" (linhay) suggests such a use. The addition of a jettied frontage at about this date suggests the extension of first floor accommodation beyond the building-line. John Wood's plan of 1843 shows the Old Custom House and the Red Lion as a single unit with the Old Custom House element jutting forward. In the C19 the end rooms were lost to neighbouring plots and a shop was formed beyond the front wall of the earlier building. Further work, recording and documentary research, would no doubt enhance the understanding of this important building..