9, Orchard Way

Cottage in two units, late 17th or early 18th century with 19th and 20th century additions and alterations, located in Badsey.

The building is part timber-framed and wholly faced in largish bricks laid in a version of English garden wall bond, with some fragments of lime render surviving. A very large stepped stone external stack of grey lias with some yellow limestone quoins rises from the centre, with upper levels of brick. The roof is of handmade tiles with dentilled eaves. A brick end stack stands to the left, and a small rear external brick stack to the right. The plan clearly shows two units: the division between them is visible in a vertical crack in the brickwork and in the differing roof profiles. The building is two storeys.

The main frontage is a three-window range of casements set close under the eaves. The ground floor has an off-centre segmental-arched doorway with boarded door and a main segmental-arched ground floor window to the left; a blocked arched opening is visible to the right. The gable-end frontage to the former second cottage features a boarded door and adjacent segmental-arched window.

Interior. The door opens directly into the kitchen/living room, which has a low lath and plaster ceiling with heavy chamfered and stopped spine beam and cross joist. An open stone fireplace with mantelshelf, partly blocked with a later range, contains a bread oven and salt niche. Wooden winder stairs behind a boarded door adjacent to the front door rise to the first floor landing, where timber framing is visible on both sides, part black painted. To the left, later re-modelling is evident in limewashed timber-framing, showing alteration to the roof pitch and raised height of the frontage to accommodate first floor windows. The bedroom has limewashed timber-framing in the gable-end wall, a small 19th century fireplace fitted into the main flue, and a window fitted into the timber-framing, with the original roof pitch surviving to the rear with dormers. Access to the second unit passes through a ground-floor doorway created under the stairs, leading through what was formerly a narrow passage space with limewashed vertical post timber-framing, possibly formerly used as a pantry or dairy. The second unit's main ground floor room has a higher ceiling with a heavy cross beam featuring a very narrow chamfer and exposed joists, painted black. The fireplace here is 20th century, relating to a very narrow external stack. A second staircase against the frontage rises to a single bedroom showing limewashed timber-framing of the original roof pitch, with a lath and plaster ceiling.

The core is a timber-framed cottage of probably late 17th or early 18th century date, subsequently re-fronted and altered, and converted into two cottages probably in the early 19th century. In the early 20th century it was converted back into a single dwelling. The building represents a small timber-framed cottage with a very large external stone stack, with both stages of development representing small-scale rural accommodation. Scattered stone tiles in the garden suggest a former roof covering. The cottage exemplifies the local settlement pattern of nucleated farmhouses arranged along the main thoroughfare with lanes at right angles where such smaller cottages were located.