Duffy'S Cottage

Duffy's Cottage is likely an 18th-century cottage, with 19th-century and late 20th-century alterations and additions. It’s located in Ruckley, near Langley. The cottage is built from un-coursed and roughly coursed grey sandstone rubble, with red brick window dressings. It has a plain tile roof and an L-shaped layout, originally comprising two rooms with a 20th-century addition at the rear. The cottage is one storey high with an attic, featuring a gabled eaves dormer on the right side with a 20th-century two-light wooden casement window. There's an external brick end stack on the left and a brick stack off-ridge on the rear wing. The front has three windows, each with a two-light wooden casement and a segmental brick head. A straight joint is visible to the left of the right-hand casement. A 20th-century two-leaf boarded door is set into an angle at the rear. The interior remains uninspected. Historically, the cottage served as the village poor house in the 18th century and for some time afterwards. An earlier description from 1975 notes that some roof timbers were dated to around 1630 by carbon-14 analysis, though they were likely reused. It is said that a very large bread oven was removed during the 20th-century additions.