Yeovil's Virtual Museum

44 princes street

(East Side) - A Seventeenth Century Town House

 

One of the oldest buildings in this area, yet seemingly insignificant in today's street scene, 44 Princes Street was originally a small seventeenth century town house built in Yeovil brick under a plain clay tiled roof, which almost certainly would have originally been thatched.

The surviving original features of the elevation are the two first floor windows which are mullioned two-light windows in a transitional style between Tudor chamfered and Georgian.

From about 1832 it was the home and law practice of Edwin Tomkins until his death in 1861. As seen in the photograph below, during the late 1970s/early 1980s it was Widger's decorating stores but more recently most Yeovilians will remember it as The Yeovil Bookshop, although today it is the in-toto kitchen showroom.

 

 

A photograph of the 1950s of the block of former seventeenth and eighteenth town houses on the eastern side of Princes Street, to the south of North Lane.

 

This colourised photograph features in my book 'Yeovil From Old Photographs'

Photographed (I think) in the late 1970s when 46 & 48 were Channing's toy shop, 44 was Widgers decorating stores, 42 was Thorne's hairdresser and tobacconist and 40 was the WI Market (before it moved to Hendford, near to the Butchers Arms).

 

44 Princes Street in an enlargement of the previous photograph.

 

This photograph features in my book 'Now That's What I Call Yeovil'

The terrace photographed around 1990.

 

For many years No 44 was home to the Yeovil Bookshop, seen again around 1990.

 

The former small seventeenth century town house fades almost into insignificance behind today's shop front and street furniture. Photographed in 2013.