Your historian had always assumed that some of Sidmouth's earliest houses, dating from the 1500s, would have been little whitewashed cob cottages, similar to what we see in Otterton today.

However, after reading the Rev Edmund Butcher's The Beauties of Sidmouth, written in the early 1800s, he claims that almost the whole town was previously made up of dark-stone thatched houses with chimneys towards the street.

The Beauties of Sidmouth extract (Graham Symington)

The only examples of these medieval style houses that your historian can find today appear in Chapel Street and in School Street in Sidford.

Much development of the town took place during the Georgian and Victorian periods, with these lovely stone cottages being replaced by much larger 'modern' town houses, with their ground floors later being converted into shops.

It is sad that most of our early houses have now gone but pleasing to see that we have retained a few to remind us of our past.

More by Graham Symington:

1. The history of the now-demolished Blackmore Hall
2. The history of Sidmouth's Connaught Gardens
3. A dancing bear, girls of bad character and smuggling: The history of Sidmouth's The Old Ship Inn
4. Sidmouth, Jane Austen and ITV's Sanditon
5. The history of The Byes, in pictures
6. Tar Barrels... in Sidmouth?
7. Remembering Pike's Cottages
8. Sidmouth's old toll houses
9. Policing in Victorian and Edwardian Sidmouth
10. The history of The Ham