The Desert

The Desert is a cottage located on Chapel Lawn Road in Bucknell, dating from the 17th century with later additions and alterations. It features a roughcast timber frame and a 20th-century cedar shingle roof. The building is one storey with an attic and consists of four framed bays, including a chimney bay, with the right bay likely being a slightly later addition. There is a 19th-century fixed-light window to the left and a 20th-century casement window immediately to the left of a 20th-century gabled porch, which has a contemporary half-glazed outer door and an inner door that is probably a 17th-century plank door. A small 20th-century window is located to the right. The cottage also has three late 20th-century gabled eaves dormers, a brown brick ridge stack to the right of the porch, and a red brick stack in the roof slope to the rear on the right.

Inside, the cottage has three rooms on the ground floor with a large, seemingly inserted stack to the right of the entrance. The timber frame, featuring square panels, is exposed in the cross wall between the left and centre rooms, the back wall, and partially in the front wall. The centre room has two deep-chamfered spine beams, while the right room has a single deep-chamfered spine beam, an 18th-century moulded wooden cornice on the ceiling, and a contemporary wall cupboard in the front right corner. A plank door, likely painted in the 19th century with an image of a girl carrying a bowl, has a rectangular barred overlight and leads to an oak winder staircase. There is an infilled doorway, probably once external, now blocked off by the staircase. A straight-flight oak staircase is located in the left ground floor room. The first floor features wide boarded floorboards and plank doors throughout. The double-purlin roof has trusses exposed to the left and right of a rubblestone stack (partly plastered), with the left side having raking struts from the tie beam to the principal rafters and the right side featuring raking queen struts, along with woven infill in the panels. A full-length 20th-century lean-to at the rear is not of special architectural interest.