MEM21972 - The White Hart Inn, Stables and Coach House, Fore Street and High Street, Dulverton (Building)

White Hart House has a sign written board that declares it to be the former 17th Century coaching inn described in Lorna Doone. Its two storey frontage to High Street has a large gable containing an attic storey. The ground floor has a deep semicircular arched entrance porch and adjoining round-headed windows with radial glazing bars. To the left are large timber mullion windows on both storeys, which tend to confirm the 17th Century date. [1] The White Hart is a mid to late 16th Century building, which served as an inn. Various trades and businesses have used parts of the building in the 20th Century, and two small buildings have been attached to it. [2] In 1795, the White Hart, on at least one occasion, served as an auction house. [3] The buildings were subject to rapid survey in 2011. They are a series of irregular structures with many projections or recessions of their frontages towards the streets and may represent encroachment on an original triangular marketplace. The original White Hart forms a 'C' or 'U' shaped range extending around a small courtyard to the southwest of the Town Hall. Further buildings southwest may be later encroachments and the White Hart may originally have had three principal facades. Only a small part of the southern section of the ground floor (within the 'High Society' hair salon) was inspected. The report concludes that the building may preserve parts of a 15th or 16th Century structure which has been heavily altered and partially obscured by later accretions. It may have been constructed in the middle of a former open market place and could have originated as a free-standing structure. The addition of a loggia or portico at one end of the building and its proximity to a property formerly known from c.1720 as 'The Cage' or 'The Bastille' raises the interesting possibility that the former White Hart might have originated as a public building such as a Market House or even a Guildhall; a predecessor of the present Town Hall, with a lock-up jail in close proximity. [4] The Tithe Map for Dulverton shows a large building occupying the area where Fore Street meets High Street, centred at SS 9138 2787. This is labelled 2097. Running northeasterly along High Street from this building are four subsiduary buildings, labelled 2098 (SS 9139 2788), 2099 (SS 9139 2788), 2100 (SS 9140 2788) and 2101 (SS 9140 2789). The Apportionment describes these as owned by Betty Kingdon and occupied by Thomas Rossiter, with the individual land parcels as below: 2097: White Hart Inn; 2098: Stables; 2099: Coach House; 2100: Court; 2101: Stables. [5] The group appear to be similarly arranged on the 1st Edition Ordnance Survey map, save that those buildings shown in plots 2099 and 2100 have been turned through 90 degrees so that one runs along High Street and the other is to its rear (northwest). [6] The arrangement noted in source [6] seems to be repeated on the 2018 MasterMap data, save that the main Inn building has been subdivided. [7] 25, High Street is suggested to have late medieval origins in the 2019 Conservation Area Appraisal for Dulverton. 4, Fore Street (Dulverton Hardware) occupies a corner site and has a good late 19th or early 20th Century shopfront, with the entrance on the splay and ornate pilasters and consoles flanking the display windows and fascia. White Hart House (23) forms a C shaped range around a small front cobbled courtyard. [8] The heritage asset was assessed for inclusion on the Exmoor Local Heritage List in November 2022. It was decided to add the asset to the Local Heritage List. [9]