Behind the scenes at the museum.

Shrouded in heavy duty plastic, Bogan House in the centre of Totnes is revealing its secrets as it undergoes a painstaking renovation.

I was fortunate to go behind the scenes to meet some of the people working on the building.Thanks to the foresight and passion of two families, Bogan House today stands as one of the best preserved late Medieval house in the town. It was Grade One listed in 1978.

It could have had a very different future, had the planners of the 1970s had their way.

Bogan House is named for wealthy wool merchant William Bogan, mayor of Totnes in 1580, who bought the original house and , it’s thought, extended it, building out over the
street – which we now call The Butterwalk.

The grand room above the street has an ornate plaster ceiling with his initials embossed in it. Ceilings like this were often given as wedding presents so perhaps this was a present for his wife Elizabeth, because her initials are also in the ceiling. Back in the 1970’s Bogan House and many of the buildings we now look at with fondness were under threat.
Neglected, squatted in, unloved and unregarded, the area behind – down to what is now the North Street car park – was earmarked for radical demolition to build a new road.
The main street could then be pedestrianised. This would have destroyed the Medieval burgage plots, the narrow strips of land which run down from the main street.
Bogan House, which occupies one of the bigger burgage plots, was considered a prime site for a supermarket. But fate – in the form of John Tuckey – intervened.
His daughter Anthea, who has lived in the rear portion of the house since 1972, told me more.
“Back in the Seventies nobody cared a damn. We bought it with the threat of compulsory purchase hanging over it.”
The road plan came and went and the ancient heart of Totnes was saved. Arguments about pedestrianisation simmer on!

John, a farmer and landscape gardener who’d restored other historic homes, began to strip back the layers of alterations performed variously by the Georgian, Victorians and the
later tenants, who lived in the flats shoe-horned into the venerable frame. The very back of the house, now a privately owned home, was derelict. “My father very nearly brought one of the chimneys down.As he pulled a loose timber from the fireplace the whole chinmney front collapsed, “ Anthea said. “It takes courage to do this. You live in dust and filth. It’s in our blood to live in dust.”

Under the winding 16th century stair case at the front of the house the previous owners kept their coal heap. The carved plaster ceiling, installed in the 1680s, was obscured by layers of paint. The massive granite fireplace had been bashed about. But gradually the abuse was rectified. The Aga John installed in the kitchen, still warms the ancient stone walls. John Tuckey opened an antique shop in the front of Bogan House. There’s still an antique shop there, run by Chris Mitchell, the son of the man who forms the other half of the house’s restoration story.

It’s in our blood to live in dust.

Back in the early 1960s Douglas Mitchell was Mayor of Totnes – like William Bogan centuries before. He bought the building now housing the town museum, and Birdwood
House as well. Chris takes up the story. “There was a wet fish shop next door. Priscilla my step mum went in to get some fish and my father came in to see John. She came out and he said to her I’ve just bought Bogan House!” It needed a lot of work, and today’s comprehensive project, funded entirely by the family Mitchell Trust, continues the job.

Hard Graft

It’s incredible what’s been done. Behind the scenes, which few people will see or appreciate, are layers of top quality craftsmanship. Anthea shows me what she fondly calls Gary’s Cupboard. “Gary is a 21st century carpenter. He stood for a long time looking at a large stone in the wall above. Just sitting there waiting to drop on your head. He looked at it and it looked at him. “There’s two storeys of this depth of wall sitting on that (old beams). He calmly took a deep breath and put in this wonderful oak frame. That’s taking the weight of the whole of the building.”
It’s a broom cupboard, essentially. But also a work of engineering – and a work of art.

Architect Annie Brick has been involved with the renovation project for several years. She showed me around, from the attic’s new roof beams, to the ground floor and even onto the scaffolding to see the front of the building, now minus its familiar white painted slates. It’s a skeleton of ancient wood and Victorian additions, chunks of which will need cutting out and replacing.

It turns out painting the slates was a big mistake.“It was refronted in Victorian times and the slates were dropping off. They’d been painted with gloss paint and so the building’s front couldn’t breathe,” she explained.

Joe Bosence, site manager, said the Victorians neglected to fit proper lead around the windows so water has got in and rotted some of the timbers. Part of the massive project is replacing the slates with reclaimed slates, bedded in lime mortar. One of the oak pillars underneath the overhanging storeys also needs repair. I was surprised when Annie told me the red painted pillars are actually hollow – for good structural reasons – but one is feeling its age. “It’s vital we use the right materials, like lime render and plaster, oak, Douglas fir and breathable paints,” she said.

Even the scaffolding is unusual – it couldn’t be attached to the building, so instead the lattice of metal poles and the wooden platform I stood on is held in place with 18 tons of ballast. Historian Michael Laithwaite also recognised the building’s qualities and his survey details the reasons it qualified for
listing. Annie says she invited Michael, then in his 80s, to come back and have another look and write another report. “It was the last report he did before he died,” she says.

Craftwork

Local craftspeople like Joe , Jason Edwards, Mike Vickery, Jon Bayes, Richard Wallis and Peter Beard – and Gary the carpenter – are using their specialist skills to bring Bogan House back to life. I met window maker Tim Sloan, who has spent the best part of a decade working here on and off. He showed me a piece of the Victorian window frame he’s replacing. He’ll reuse the old glass. “You can see how bent it is if you look along it, bent under the weight of the glass.” These are from the 1880s. “The house has got its own unique little personality. Some of it’s Medieval, some of it’s Georgian, some Victorian, so it’s got a variety of different personalities. It’s probably had families grown up in here, had children themselves you know.”

He showed Annie and me one of the finds, a clay marble from the Georgian period.
“Some poor child’s probably been in tears losing that down a hole.” He also found a gentleman’s stick pin, for a cravat or tie, which was lodged between floors at the front of the house. It must have fallen through a gap in the floorboards, undisturbed for years until now.
And in the roof there was an old bowl – dating from 1689, which Anthea is keeping safe. Once the work is done – the final job will be rehanging the slate frontage – there’s the question of how the building will earn its keep. Birdwood is a separate entity, also run by Anthea. It’s financially self sufficient.

The Future

Bogan’s 17th century hall is rented out to local groups, and the Devonshire Collection of Costumes has occupied the first floor since 1986. But the renovations have cost around half a million pounds.

John Severn is secretary to the Mitchell Trust. “We started the work in 2017. It’s been a tortuous journey and we are now more than half way round the building. For the past two years people have been walking past saying that’s a wreck, but the slate frontage is the last part of the
project.”  He said the trust was concentrating on getting to the finishing line before thinking about the future. “It’s true that the whole running of the building is heavily supported by the Mitchell Trust.”

Julia Fox is the head of the costume collection, currently packed away in myriad boxes. “It’s a difficult place to store clothes but the building is a draw for the public and the Trust has always been very kind to us,” she said.

She’s already planning the first exhibition back in Bogan House, which will feature a pair of gauntlet gloves, embroidered in silver bullion, which were made in around 1650.
This landmark building is also still a home. Anthea clearly loves it. “I’m attached to it , I feel very comfortable in it. I understand it.” Not everyone would want to live here. “Whatever happens this building has to be ready to face the next century.”

Fifty years ago the odds were not in its favour. But it survived the mania for modernisation which wrecked so many historic towns. Bogan House – which by the way is pronounced BOWgan, not BOGan – is today a testament to the two families – and the skilled craftsmen – who have put it back together for the benefit of all of us.