The Cottage

The Cottage is a house that dates from the 16th century to the 20th century, located in Navestock. It features a timber-framed structure that is rendered, with a hipped roof flanked by gabled sections, all covered in peg tiles. The building has 20th-century metal casement windows and an irregular T-shaped plan. A flat-roofed 20th-century porch is located on the north side.

The western unit of the house consists of two bays and dates from the 15th or 16th century. It is two storeys high, with flat-laid joists that have centre tenons. The first floor includes double mullioned windows on either side of a central storey post, although the mullions have been restored. A cambered tie-beam and corner arched bracket braces in the west end wall beneath the floor joists suggest that the ground floor was originally open here and possibly jettied. A stack was added to the north around 1700.

To the south, there is a 20th-century parallel block, but a projecting middle rail from the former structure remains. The central unit is an early 17th-century single-storey range that extends to the east end of the current building and originally extended beyond that, but the west end was raised to two storeys in the early 19th century. There are also 20th-century additions on the south and north sides.