Hatches

Hatches is a small house dating from around 1600, with alterations made in the 19th and 20th centuries. It features a timber frame, is plastered, and has a thatched roof. The house consists of three bays aligned northwest to southeast, with the main aspect facing southwest. There is an original axial chimney stack at the southeast end of the middle bay and an early 19th-century chimney stack at the northwest end.

To the northwest, there is a lean-to extension with a corrugated iron roof, and to the northeast, there is another lean-to extension with a slate roof added around 1972. The building is single-storey with attics and includes one 19th-century cast iron casement window in the northwest extension, a plain boarded door, and three 20th-century casement windows, along with two additional windows in eyebrow dormers.

Internally, the timber frame is partly exposed, featuring jowled posts and arched braces that rise from the corner posts to the tie beams and wall plates, with trenched inside studs. The original floor in the northwest bay includes an axial beam with lamb's tongue stops. The floor in the middle bay was likely inserted early in the building's life and also has an axial beam with lamb's tongue stops, with joists supported on pegged clamps at the sides. There is no evidence of unglazed windows. The chimney stack appears to have been reduced in depth from front to back.

The partition between the middle and northwest bays is made of exposed studding with wattle fixings on the sides, and there is one original plain doorway. At the first-floor level, a doorway has been inserted through the tie beam, which is strongly framed to resist tension, and this has since been blocked. Originally, this building was divided into two cottages in the early 19th century, with an extra door that was later blocked, but it has now been re-combined into a single dwelling. The southeast end of the roof may have originally been hipped or half-hipped, but this is now covered by continuous thatch extending to the adjacent house.