Canary Cottage

Canary Cottage is a farm cottage dating from around 1750. It is located approximately 190 metres north of the Wisbech Road (A47).

The cottage is L-shaped, comprising a rectangular farmhouse with a single-storey outbuilding attached to the east. The walls are painted red brick in English bond, with a dentilled eaves course, and the roof is thatched, with a west-facing gable where the chimneystack was rebuilt in the late 19th or early 20th century. The front (south) elevation features a dormer to the first floor, two-light side-hung casement windows to both ground and first floors, and a timber batten-and-plank door, all within gauged flat-arched openings. The west elevation has a small window to the north first-floor bedroom, and the east elevation has a small window to the under-stair cupboard. The rear (north) elevation has a single top-hung casement window and a timber batten-and-plank door. The attached outbuilding has evidence of a previous door opening on its front elevation, now blocked, and two timber batten-and-plank doors to the rear, the west door being larger than the east. The doors and windows are painted canary yellow, giving the cottage its name.

Inside, the cottage has two rooms on the ground floor: a sitting room to the front and a kitchen to the rear. The sitting room includes a timber cupboard, a mid-20th century tiled fire surround, timber shelving on the west wall, and a floor of exposed machine-made bricks. The kitchen contains a Belfast sink under the north window, and two timber battened doors leading to the stair and under-stair cupboard on the east wall. The winder stair has timber treads that appear to have been renewed in the mid-20th century. The first floor has two bedrooms with exposed timber floorboards. The north room is the smallest and leads to the larger bedroom to the south, which has a dormer window on its south wall. A hole in the ceiling above the dormer window provides a view into the thatched dormer, revealing replaced timbers and thatch from the mid-20th century. The roof structure itself was not visible. The outbuilding contains a store room in the west part, and a privy in the east part, with painted red brick walls.