Reading Room and Cottage Adjoining to Right is a Grade II listed building in the County Durham local planning authority area, England. First listed on 5 June 1987. Reading room, cottage.
Reading Room and Cottage Adjoining to Right
- WRENN ID
- burning-foundation-wren
- Grade
- II
- Local Planning Authority
- County Durham
- Constituency
- Bishop Auckland MP: Dr Sam Rushworth (Lab)
- Country
- England
- Date first listed
- 5 June 1987
- Type
- Reading room, cottage
- OS grid reference
- NY 873 388
- Coordinates
- 54.74482, -2.19876
- Source
- Historic England listing
Description
The Reading Room and the adjoining cottage were built in 1850, although the cottage includes one bay from a bastle-type building dating back to around 1600. The Reading Room and the left part of the cottage are constructed from coursed squared stone with tooled dressings, while the right bay is made of rubble with a larger boulder plinth. The roof is stone-flagged.
The Reading Room is a single tall storey with two bays. It features a central ledged and boarded door, flanked by 16-pane sash windows. The left bay of the cottage has a similar door and 20th-century windows in the original openings, all with tooled lintels and sills. The right bay has modern windows in new openings. The cottage has end chimneys, with the left chimney likely also serving the Reading Room. On the left side of the Reading Room, there is a segment-arched wagon entrance with alternating-block jambs, which has been partly filled and has 20th-century boarded doors inserted.
Historically, this building was constructed by Thomas Sopwith, who was the agent for The Blackett lead mines, for the use of the miners.
Local climate
Reading Room and Cottage Adjoining to Right sits in a wetter-than-average part of the UK, with an average of 1,050 mm of rain a year. This makes it wetter than 85% of listed buildings in the UK. Its exposure to wind-driven rain is greater than that of 65% of listed buildings.
It experiences an average of 70 freeze-thaw cycles a year, more than 99% of listed buildings. Of these, 49 follow at least 1 mm of rain in the preceding 48 hours. Average temperatures at this location have risen by 0.3°C per decade since 1991.
Averages for 1991–2020; temperature trend 1991–2025. Figures describe the wider area (a grid cell of roughly 10 km), not the individual site. Contains modified Copernicus Climate Change Service information 2026.
More on this building
Sign in or create a free account to unlock:
- No EPC on record for this property
- No sale records on file
- No related consent applications matched
- Detailed attributes — period, style, materials, features
- Flood risk assessment
- Radon risk assessment
- Weather exposure and heating demand — rain and frost month by month and year by year, wind direction, solar and humidity
Matched applications, energy data and sale records are assembled automatically and may contain errors. Flag incorrect data.
Similar buildings
The closest matches to this building from all 493,000 UK listed buildings, by architecture, period and materials.
this building 1 similar nearby listed buildings