The Cottage

The Cottage is a house dating from the mid-16th century, with alterations and additions made in the mid-19th century. It is timber-framed with plaster and painted brick infill panels, and has a plain tile roof with brick ridge and integral end stacks.

The house has a T-shaped plan, comprising a three-bay hall range aligned east-west and facing north, with a two-bay parlour wing at the east end. A mid-19th century rear wing is attached to the hall range. The building is two storeys high, with close studding a full storey in height. The hall range has straight braces, while the parlour wing has long straight tension braces. The gabled parlour wing has a 20th-century ground floor casement and a 16th-century first-floor window featuring ovolo-moulded mullions and a carved sill bracket. The gable is jettied out on carved brackets, and the framing consists of small square panels containing quatrefoils. The hall range has a central 20th-century gabled porch with a dormer containing a mid-19th-century glazing bar sash with a segmental head. A two-storey canted bay window, also of the 19th century, is to the right, with 20th-century glazing bar windows and a hipped roof. A single-storey canted projection is located in the re-entrant angle between the hall range and parlour wing. The right-hand end of the hall range exhibits a 19th-century glazing bar sash with horns to the ground floor, a blocked 16th-century window to the first floor, and a collar and tie beam roof truss carrying two pairs of purlins. A mid-19th-century canted bay with twelve-pane glazing bar sashes and a hipped roof is to the rear of the hall range at this end. The east and south walls of the wing feature four tiers of small square panels.

Inside, the entry is now directly into the central hall. This room has 16th-century panelling on the west wall, incorporating a door, with a decorative frieze. Intersecting cross and spine beams and a timber bressumer over the fireplace all have ovolo-mouldings with run-out stops. The chimney stack at the east end of the hall backs onto a narrow bay that probably formed the original entrance passage, with a later stack blocking it, which heated the parlour wing. The ground floor of the parlour wing is divided into a large northern bay with an ovolo-moulded cross beam, and a narrow southern bay that may have been a service room. The south gable of the parlour wing has herringbone-patterned struts, not visible externally.