Orchard Cottage

Orchard Cottage is a timber-framed cottage dating back to the late 13th or early 14th century, with significant additions and alterations made in the 15th and 16th centuries. The exterior is a mix of plastered timber framing and tile hanging on the first floor, with a thatched roof. The end stacks are built of red brick, with an older local brick stack on the left-hand side, partially rebuilt. A 19th-century tile-roofed lean-to is attached to the right-hand side. The cottage originally comprised an open hall with two bays, with a third bay rebuilt in the 15th and late 16th centuries as a jettied cross-wing. This cross-wing incorporates a deeply moulded 14th-century ceiling beam. A south-west bay of the hall was demolished, replaced by a gable wall featuring an external stack, likely dating to the late 16th century or later, and coinciding with the insertion of a framed ceiling. Original features include a hall window on the first floor with diamond mullions, showing a splayed scarf joint with under squinted butts in the wall plate, and a similar scarf in a closed truss to the north-east of the hall, which includes a crown post and a fragment of a collar purlin, with soot-blackened timbers. One post of a display truss has a mortise for an arch brace. The roof was rebuilt in the late 16th century.