Fir Cottage is a Grade II listed building in the Braintree local planning authority area, England. First listed on 19 March 1986. Cottage. 3 related planning applications.

Fir Cottage

WRENN ID
broken-loft-sorrel
Grade
II
Local Planning Authority
Braintree
Constituency
Braintree MP: Sir James Cleverly (Con)
Country
England
Date first listed
19 March 1986
Type
Cottage
Address
Fir Cottage, Braintree Road, Wethersfield, CM7 4AG
OS grid reference
TL 719 303
Coordinates
51.94529, 0.49974
Source
Historic England listing

Also on this page: sale history · EPC · related consents · flood risk · radon risk · weather exposure · detailed attributes ↓

Description

Fir Cottage is a late 17th-century cottage that has been altered in the 19th century. It is timber-framed with plaster rendering and a roof of handmade red clay tiles. The cottage has three bays facing southwest, with a central stack forming a lobby-entrance. There is a single-storey lean-to extension at the rear, now roofed with corrugated iron.

The cottage is one storey high with attics. It features two late 19th-century splayed casement windows, a central four-panel door with glazed upper panels, and pargetted panels with moulded borders. The roof is half-hipped at both ends, retaining original sprockets at the half-hips. A gabled porch sits on the left end.

Inside, the right bay contains a chamfered axial beam with lamb's tongue stops, and the left bay has a chamfered transverse beam with no stops. The original hearths have been reduced to accommodate 20th-century grates. The roof structure includes a clasped purlin roof and a scarf joint in the rear wallplate which is face-halved and bladed.

Local climate

Fir Cottage sits in one of the driest parts of the UK, with an average of 690 mm of rain a year. This makes it drier than 97% of listed buildings in the UK. Its exposure to wind-driven rain is lower than that of 85% of listed buildings.

It experiences an average of 32 freeze-thaw cycles a year, fewer than 60% of listed buildings. Of these, 16 follow at least 1 mm of rain in the preceding 48 hours. Average temperatures at this location have risen by 0.3°C per decade since 1991.

Averages for 1991–2020; temperature trend 1991–2025. Figures describe the wider area (a grid cell of roughly 10 km), not the individual site. Contains modified Copernicus Climate Change Service information 2026.

More on this building

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  • Full EPC report — heating system, energy costs, size, glazing, construction etc.
  • Sale history — 4 transactions since 1997
  • Related listed building consents — 3 applications
  • Detailed attributes — period, style, materials, features
  • Flood risk assessment
  • Radon risk assessment
  • Weather exposure and heating demand — rain and frost month by month and year by year, wind direction, solar and humidity
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