The concept for Butterwalk was a multi-use building housing a collective of designers, makers and crafters across four floors of this Grade II Listed medieval merchants house. We were commissioned to design the store layout and obtained the necessary Listed building consent and planning approvals for the significant refurbishment and alteration of this important historic building in Totnes High Street. Situated in the middle of the covered Butterwalk, which lends the building its name, this medieval covered walkaway was designed to provide shelter and house the range of artisans, crafters and merchants, all selling their wares onto the bustling Totnes High Street.
There is a café housed at the front of the ground floor, combined with large retail areas on ground and first. The building then also provides a wide range of different spaces for different types of scales of makers, with the second floor housing a number of smaller studio spaces, and the third floor up in the beautiful medieval oak trussed roof, housing a lovely open plan workspace, now occupied by our friends at Gemma Dudgeon Interiors.
The building was used for decades as a retail unit on the ground and first floors only. This meant that the upper floors were hidden away behind layers of storage shelving and cladding. One of the joys of a historic project of this nature is unpicking the layers of a building’s past and revealing stories, which, in this case included discovering an ancient ships mast, now used as the newel post for the staircase running up three stories. Also visible on the first floor, and carefully restored, are areas of decorative plaster mouldings from the grand entertaining room of the original medieval Merchant owner occupier.
Project type
Retail, Cafe & Workshop Spaces
Building Type
Grade II Listed Merchant’s House
Completion Date
2023
location
Totnes
PHOTOGRAPHER
Matthias Peters
Behind the Scenes
