The Tudor House in Tudor Street, on Exe Island, is one of the last surviving historic buildings in that part of Exeter. Its origins have long been uncertain, and the building has been described as something of an enigma. English Heritage date it to the late sixteenth century, though without providing any supporting evidence, while research undertaken by Jacqueline Warren suggests a rather later construction. Her work places the building in the 1630s, and the surviving deeds strengthen that conclusion. They record that the house was built by Isaac Burche the Elder, a maltster, who died in 1683. Before Burche’s death the property had already passed to the Gubbs family, and in September 1670 John Gubbs married Elizabeth Leach. This marriage accounts for the Leach coat of arms on the right-hand side of the façade, while the central arms relate to the Gubbs family. The left-hand coat of arms may be those of the Northmore family, who owned the house in the eighteenth century. The accompanying photograph from 1910 shows a large group of children gathered outside the house, providing a rare glimpse of its appearance and surroundings at the beginning of the twentieth century.
In the mid eighteenth century the house was owned by Thomas Smith and his sisters, but the debts of their father forced a sale. The purchaser had a daughter who married Robert Trewman, founder of Trewman’s Exeter Flying Post, and the house eventually came into his possession. Trewman’s grandson sold it in 1861, after which the building entered a long period of decline. By the early twentieth century it was let as tenements, and in November 1902 the Exeter and Plymouth Gazette advertised it as “All that substantially-built Dwellinghouse, known as the ‘OLD TUDOR HOUSE,’ situate in Tudor-street, Exeter,” producing a gross rental of £20 16s per annum when fully let. It was sold to G. D. Gale for £225. The following year it was again offered, this time to let at £26 4s 4d per annum, with Dunn and Baker acting as solicitors. In August 1903 it changed hands once more, for the reduced price of £147 10s, to Mr Perrett. The subsequent history is unclear, but by 1964 the house was being used for commercial purposes, unloved and deteriorating.
The building itself is a four-storey timber-framed structure of around 4,500 square feet. The ground floor is of stone, while local red brick forms the side walls. Pevsner notes that this is the earliest use of brick on a significant scale in an Exeter building. The top floor has two gabled half-dormers, and all the windows are fitted with leaded lattice casements. The seventeenth-century cut slate hanging of the first floor is one of the most striking features of the exterior, with three heraldic coats of arms enclosed in wreaths attached to the façade. Until 1820 the entire front was covered in slate. A single newel post rises through all four floors, and during restoration work a musket-ball was found embedded in one of the beams.
By 1964 the house was in a very poor condition. It was then being used by Tudor Electrical Co. as an electrical repair shop. Bill Lovell purchased it for £700 and spent the next eleven years, and a further £60,000, restoring the building. In an interview he explained some of the methods he employed. He believed that some of the original timbers were oak taken from ships being broken up, and he acquired similar timbers from other old buildings that were being demolished to replace those that had decayed. A Whiteways cider vat found locally provided oak of exactly the right curvature for certain structural replacements. Modern nails would have corroded due to the acidity of the old timber, so Lovell obtained suitable nails from Walter Otton, a builders’ merchant who still had stock that was a century old. Old glazing was supplied by a local glazier who had salvaged glass from historic houses being demolished. Peg slates for the re-roofing were urgently required, and a fortunate discovery at Delabole Quarries provided slates that had been set aside a hundred years earlier for a buyer who never collected them. They were precisely what was needed.
Lovell’s restoration work was extensive and costly, and by 1975 he was almost bankrupted. He offered the house to Exeter City Council, who declined it, and it was subsequently sold on the open market for £60,000. Lovell’s efforts were recognised with a Civic Trust Award. The building then became The Tudor House Restaurant, run by the owners of Clair’s restaurant in the old Princesshay. In 1994 it was converted back into a dwelling by Alison Hurrell. The house contains six reception rooms, six bedrooms and five bathrooms. Hurrell later explained that although the building had been used as a restaurant, its listed status meant that the rooms still retained their domestic character, with dark blue, green and gold on the walls. She modernised the interior for contemporary living, favouring white throughout, and described the house as airy, calm, rustic, and possessing a secluded roof garden in the centre of the city.
The house was placed on the market in 2011 and sold for £750,000. It was Grade II* listed on 29 January 1953. Found on Exe Island, it is a fine survivor of the Exeter Blitz. The city was bombed in April and May 1942, when targets were chosen for their cultural and historical value rather than strategic importance. On the night of 23/24 April seven bombs fell on Exeter, damaging around two hundred houses and killing five people. The following night two waves of twenty bombers attacked again, most flying two sorties. In good visibility, and at low level in the absence of anti-aircraft defence, they struck the city, particularly the Pennsylvania area, killing seventy-three and injuring fifty-four. Four raiders were shot down. In total 1,500 of the city’s 20,000 houses were obliterated and 2,700 badly damaged, along with hundreds of shops, offices, warehouses and public houses. The Luftwaffe then turned its attention to Bath, York and Norwich before returning to Exeter in early May. Much of the city centre was devastated, and it was some twenty years before repairs were completed, resulting in a new infrastructure. Tiddy House, however, survived.
Today the Old Tudor House, or Tiddy House, stands as one of the most significant historic buildings on Exe Island. Its uncertain origins, its heraldic associations, its long decline, and its remarkable restoration all contribute to its importance. It remains a private home, and although its exterior may be viewed from Tudor Street, visitors are asked to be respectful, for it is not open to the public.
