1 And 2 Oak Cottages

The property comprises two cottages, originally a single house, likely dating from the 15th century with an addition from the 16th century. It is timber framed with lath and plaster and red brick infill, and has a plain tile roof. The original structure was an open hall, consisting of one large bay and one smaller bay aligned roughly north-west/south-east, with a projecting, gabled cross-wing of two framed bays added to the west in the 16th century.

The cross-wing features square framing panels (three from the sole-plate to the wall-plate) and close studding. The building is one storey with an attic, except for the cross-wing, which is two storeys high. The southwest front features a central timber-framed gabled eaves dormer to the hall range, with a pair of two-light wooden casement windows. A large brick stack with a recessed panel is located off-centre to the left, at the junction with the cross-wing, and there is an 18th or 19th-century external brick end stack to the front of the cross-wing. The hall range has a central two-light wooden casement window, a boarded door off-centre to the right, and a doorway to the right without a door. The gable end of the cross-wing has parallel diagonal strutting, and houses a king-post truss with V-struts at the rear. The southwest front of the cross-wing has a two-light wooden casement window off-centre to the left, and a boarded door off-centre to the right. A large, raking red sandstone rubble buttress is visible to the left. The rear of the hall range has a blocked triangular-headed doorway to the left, and a cruck truss with a ‘scotch’ to its left.

Inside, there are two full cruck trusses. The right-hand end truss has a cambered collar and V-struts, while the former hall truss has an arch-braced collar and a continuous chamfer. There are chamfered wind braces and, in the cross-wing, a tie beam cut through the central ground-floor truss. The central ground-floor room has a ceiling likely dating to around 1600, with ogee-stopped chamfered intersecting beams and joists, and an inserted large open fireplace of approximately 1600, featuring a chamfered lintel and an early 19th-century surround with a bracketed mantelpiece. A small bay to the right has chamfered beams with ogee and run-out stops. The cross-wing contains stud partitions, a round-arched fireplace in the ground-floor front room, and a blocked segmental-headed doorway in the rear room. The right-hand range was originally an open hall of two framed bays, with the stack and first floor inserted sometime in the late 16th or early 17th century.