Pickstone'S Cottages

Pickstone's Cottages comprise a house, now divided into two cottages, dating to around 1500 or earlier, with extensions and alterations in the 17th, 19th, and 20th centuries. The structure is timber-framed, with plaster infill and a roof covered in machine-made red plain tiles. Originally a two-bay hall facing northwest, it features two originally storeyed end bays and a one-bay 17th-century extension to the right. Two 20th-century flat-roofed single-story extensions have been added to the rear. The building has been symmetrically divided into two cottages, with a central stack likely dating to the 17th century and 19th/20th-century external stacks at each end. The building is one storey high with attics. The ground floor features six 20th-century casement windows with rectangular and diamond leading, two of which are at half-floor level with diamond leading, as well as two 20th-century casements in gabled dormers. There are two 20th-century doors, each with a corbelled flat canopy. Internal features include jowled posts. All internal tiebeams are missing, but in the front wallplate, to the right of the centre, there is a rebate with angled ends, thought to have been for the shutters of the hall window, indicating that the parlour or solar bay was originally located on the right side of the hall. A post on the rear wall of the hall has a long chase-mortice for a former brace to the middle tiebeam. To the left of the stack, there is an inserted floor from approximately 1570, with a chamfered transverse beam with step stops at the rear end, supported on a prick-post at the front, and a chamfered axial beam with lamb's tongue stops. The joists are plastered to the soffits. To the right of the stack, there is another inserted floor incorporating a chamfered axial beam with lamb's tongue stops, and plain joists of square section jointed with soffit tenons and diminished haunches, which appear to floor the ‘high’ end of the hall and the former parlour or solar bay. A mantel beam from a wood-burning hearth is visible on this side, blocked below for a 20th-century grate. The left bay (originally the service bay) has an axial beam with mortices of a former partition, and plain joists of square section which have been raised approximately 0.25 metre on nailed clamps. The tiebeam at this end has a chamfered cut-out with step stops, for a 16th-century inserted window. The 17th-century extension to the right has plain joists of square section. The roof was reportedly thatched until renovations in the 1930s. A tithe award of 1840 describes Peckstones as a farm of 22 acres belonging to the Free School of Earl's Colne (documented in the Essex Record Office, D/CT 355), and it is shown on an estate map of the same foundation from 1623 (Essex Record Office, D/Q 6/35).