OUR BUTTERWALK
Just up from the Market Square on Totnes High Street, Butterwalk brings together a shop, café and clothing studio across four floors.
You’ll find clothing, homewares and everyday objects from independent makers, alongside NAAiNAAi, our womenswear and menswear collection. In our sewing studio, we design, cut and make—a working process that sits alongside the finished pieces on the shop floor.
THE NAME
Butterwalk takes its name from the covered Tudor walkway outside our doors, also part of the building’s historic address. Open-fronted dairy stalls once stood beneath it, their produce protected from sun and rain, with living accommodation above. Across the street, another covered walkway sheltered poultry sellers.
The idea of providing a roof over independent businesses felt like a fitting starting point for the shop. It connects what we do today with the street’s long history of making and trade.
A HISTORY OF MAKING AT NO. 51
Before there were clothes on the cutting table, there were brushes and candles.
No. 51 began as a merchant’s house in the late sixteenth or early seventeenth century, with a separate kitchen block and a small courtyard. By the nineteenth century, the house was being used as a brush factory, while the building at the rear housed candle making.
The frontage was remodelled in the mid-nineteenth century. Later, the courtyard and former kitchen were incorporated into the main house as the ground floor became a shop.
Traces of the earlier building remain in its architectural record. Historic England’s listing describes it's original fireplace and part of an Elizabethan decorative plaster ceiling on the first floor. Outside, it notes the slate-hung frontage, granite columns and small pineapple-shaped details beneath the eaves.
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In 2022 we renovated the building, keeping and rediscovering many of it's legacy features.
The upstairs rooms have served different purposes over the centuries. With our sewing studio on the first floor, making and trading continues at No. 51.
