This is the third part of Fore Street in the village of Beer. It's a village with the most amazing variety of architectural styles, many of which are late 19th and early 20th century Arts & Crafts buildings, along with the much older vernacular cottages and 19th century parish church. Part One and Two can be seen here and here.
In the previous part, we finished with Beach Court, seen above, which was the last building I photographed on the West side. I haven't been able to take the actual last building - The Anchor Inn - being unable to get back to Beer yet.
A view from Beach Court taken of the East side, below, where we're going next.
The first one highlighted is Sunny Nook. It already has a post of its own, which can be seen here where there are more details and photos.
A gorgeous Grade II Listed Art & Crafts building, it comprises three separate cottages in a terrace range. Dated to 1894, it has been credited to the architect David Carr, who designed several buildings in Beer, although it isn't mentioned in the Listed Buildings entry.
Built with traditional rubble walls and stone dressings, it has that lovely higgledy piggledy look of different roof and window heights. The central roof coming down low over the ground floor windows is called a catslide roof, which is an English term for very steep, low roofs on which cats can't walk across without sliding! :)
There are also some interesting lozenge-shaped brick chimney stacks, one of which can be seen below.
Walking up the street the next building along is this charming 'Captain's Cottage' with stone rubble walls, dressed stone quoins and a thatched roof.
A Grade II Listed building, it was built circa early 18th century. Called The Cottage Restaurant in the listing, it appears to be just a private dwelling now. The panelled central door, seen below, is set into a moulded door case, flanked by two three-light casement windows with leaded panes.
And to top that is this wonderfully ebulient thatched hood above the door.
There's a shop next door, which I didn't photograph (apart from some of it in the above photo) but next door to that is the wonderful Marine House. One of two art galleries, the other one - Steam Gallery - is on the opposite side and can be seen in part one. They can also be seen in their own article together here, where there are more details and photos.
The boat-shaped oriel window on the front is really delightful with its long stretch of casement lights. I thought this building was a listed one but apparently not, which I found surprising, although it may have changed its appearance during refurbishing.
The windows on the top floor have the iconic Elizabethan/Tudor style drip moulds above them, which may either be original or a modern addition.
And one of the photos highlighting the tiled surround at the base of the building front seen below, containing marine subjects of fish and crustations among the plain black and red tiles.
From then on there are several shops and cottages until we come to Gravel Cottages, which is a group of 7 cottages built sometime during the 18th century, two of which - nos 7 & 8 - are listed buildings.
However, the only photos I have are of number two, and the only reason I took them is because I really liked the door whilst walking past. The white plank door set into the white roughcast wall is really delightful with its black door surround and stained glass window containing depictions of porpoises.
There's another shop after Gravel Cottages, followed by the parish church of St Michael.
Built in 1887, this church succeeded a 16th century chapel on this same site. An even earlier place of worship may have stood here before that since 1122 AD, when Beer and Seaton belonged to the Abbey of Sherborne
The walls and most of the tower consist of Hoole Head blue limestone and the columns which support the nave arcade are of Devon marble.
The lovely multifoil round windows above the arcade are really lovely and the photos below show close-ups of the marble topped with beautiful foliate carvings.
This is a fabulous, friendly church with lots of interesting artefacts and a very welcoming atmosphere. To finish this brief account here are a few more photos of the exterior, below.
All of these and a lot more photos and information can be seen and read about in its own article here.
Unfortunately, I don't have any more photos of buildings on this side of Fore Street, so this is going to be a rather short post. However, I do have ones of another building right at the top of the street just off the Square. I know absolutely nothing about it, not even its name, but it really struck me with its unusual architecture so I'm going to include it anyway. :)
It looks as though they consist of two separate dwellings with others behind it. I didn't have time to check properly as I whipped these off whilst waiting for my bus back to Seaton. I will definitely check it out when I get back over though.
And that's it for now. I checked out the rest of the buildings on that side of Fore Street and I will definitely be going back to take more photos at some point. When I do I'll make a Part Four for those missed out that warrant inclusion, as there'll be some from both sides.
Anyway, I'm sorry I was so long getting back to the blog. It took just over five weeks to get properly well from the flu and then I had so much else to catch up with. I did write quite a lot of the Devon Training Centre that I was going to post first but I've really struggled with it so I decided to do Fore Street instead, which I enjoyed a lot more!
I missed Spring because of the flu, but I had a lovely Summer Solstice celebration and hope everyone enjoyed it too.
I don't know what's coming up next as I'm not sure if I'm going to finish the training centre one after all. It's been 17 years since I started my website and then the blog and I'm almost at the end of everything I've got now, so there's only one thing for it - I have to get out more!
Cheers, everyone. :)
