Navvies Cottages Number 2

Railway navvy's cottage, early 1890s, built in timber frame on a brick plinth with brick infill laid on its side and clad in vertical weatherboarding. The roof is covered in Welsh slate. The cottage is rectangular in plan, aligned west-east, comprising three bays. It originally had a porch attached to its north elevation, now replaced by double doors.

The north elevation has three Yorkshire sliding sash windows and the central bay features wide double doors with the roof raised slightly above them. A brick chimney stands between the east and central bays. The south elevation has four sash windows, two on either side of a centrally placed door. A small modern stable with corrugated iron roof is attached to the west gable end; this addition is not regarded as being of special architectural or historical interest.

The interior was originally subdivided into three rooms, but the partition between the west and central rooms has been removed. Walls and ceilings are lined with planks, and the floor consists of planks laid on joists resting on the ground. The central room contains a brick fireplace and chimney breast in its east wall, with an opening large enough to hold a small stove, though all evidence of the original grate or fire surround has been lost. A door immediately south of the chimney gives access to the east room, which also contains a small fireplace with a mid-20th-century tiled surround.

The cottage is contemporary with the construction of the Midland and Great Northern Junction Railway, which opened in 1894 and closed in 1960, and with the station that formerly stood across the road. The 1904 Ordnance Survey map shows three buildings arranged in a straight line with south elevations flush with each other—this cottage was positioned between the station master's house to the east and a second cottage with which it formed a pair. The small porch shown on the historic map no longer survives. The cottage is very similar to those erected for navvies working on the construction of the Great Central Railway between 1894 and 1899, recorded in photographs by S.W.A. Newton.

From the 1890s onwards, railway companies began erecting hutted camps beside contractor's depots or along railway routes under construction, allowing workers to live with their families in relatively civilised conditions, replacing the earlier reputation for disorder associated with rudimentary encampments. Newton's photographs show these rooms furnished as homely as possible with rugs, ornaments and popular prints on the walls. Although the precise history of the Wymondham cottages and station master's house is not known, they may originally have been erected for construction workers and their supervisor, later used by permanent railway company staff, or may have been built specifically for the latter. The cottage was occupied until the 1950s, when it was subsequently converted into a garage and storage space. No other examples of this kind of dwelling for railway workers are known to survive in England.