Inside the Tudor house sold by council for £10k

One of the oldest houses in Plymouth has been sold by the city council for just £10,000 in the hope it is restored.

Described as a "precious historic property", the 16th Century Merchant's House was first recorded as being owned by Capt William Parker, a friend of sailor and navigator Sir Francis Drake.

It was sold to historic property restorer Joe Radmore who said he planned to renovate the property so tourists could rent it and feel what it was like to live in a Tudor home.

Plymouth City Council said the price the property was sold for reflected the considerable amount of money needed to restore it and secure its future.

Centuries after it was last lived in, the Merchant's House became a council-owned museum and housed a taxi office prior to that.

Radmore said the Grade II*-listed Tudor home reflected a time "when Plymouth was at the zenith of seafaring and exploration".

"The plan for the Merchant's House is to turn it back into how it could of looked in the early 1600s when it was built," he said.

"It will be a place where people can stay overnight and open to the whole public for free at certain periods in the year."

Plymouth City Council said Radmore had "experience in giving listed buildings a new lease of life" and felt his "proposal was a better fit for the house - a sympathetic restoration and sensitive use".

"While the building is structurally stable, the cost also reflects the considerable amount of money that will be needed to conserve, repair and restore the building," it said.

While Capt Parker was the first recorded owner of the house in 1601, it is thought the house existed in some form long before then.

Parker was a seafarer and an explorer who had a founding role in the Virginia Company and the subsequent European colonisation of North America.

He made his fortune from the sea - capturing and robbing ships, including a slave ship.

The privateer's raids on two Spanish vessels while under the command of Sir Drake, likely paid for the redevelopment of the Merchant's House into the timber framed building it is today, historians believe.

Parker, who was elected mayor on his return to the city, helped shape Elizabethan and Jacobean Plymouth

Since 2020 the council has aimed to ensure monuments and buildings are accompanied by a narrative referring to their role in the slave trade - as such, information signs outside of Merchant's House indicated he profited from looting Caribbean towns.

However, Radmore hopes the project will also discover the stories of other people who lived at 33 St Andrews Street.

Prof Elaine Murphy, a maritime historian from the University of Plymouth, said the structure of the house indicated wealthy and influential people lived there.

Its location, positioned between the historic Barbican and other important civic buildings, also highlighted its significance, said Murphy.

"The Merchant's House is very important to the history of Plymouth," she said, adding she also wanted to research the women, children and servants who lived there.

"It is one of the few surviving Tudor, early modern houses in the city.

"Just think of all the deals that must have done there... the meetings that must have taken place."

Radmore already makes an income from renting out Radford Castle, another former council property he renovated.

He said everything planned for Merchant's House was subject to listed planning consent, with the restoration expected to take about two years to complete.

The aim is for its rooms telling the different stories of Plymouth's maritime heritage.

That includes a "chart" bedroom focusing on the way explorers mapped their voyages, as well as a room influenced by the goods such as silks and fine china that were traded in Plymouth, said Radmore.

Historical research will inform what he will do with each room, he added.

"That's a lot of the fun aspect of it, the research of it," he said.

"You go down all sorts of rabbit holes."