Oak Cottage

TL 60 17 HIGH RODING THE STREET

4/8 Oak Cottage

GV II

Two houses, C15 and C16, combined to form one, with C20 extensions. Timber framed, plastered, roof tiled. This complicated building comprises (1) at the NE end, a 2-storey building of 2 bays aligned NW-SE, exhibiting weathered timber to the SW, surviving from a larger house of which nothing else remains, C16, and (2) a C15 hall house consisting of 3 bays aligned NE-SW. The small space between them has been infilled. 2 storey extension to rear (NW) and additional single-storey extension, C20. 2 storeys. On the ground floor, 3 C20 casement windows, 4 on first floor. Gablet roof at NE end, gabled at SW end. Some timber framing exposed internally. A jetty has been constructed at the front of the NE building after the initial construction, a rare feature. A chimney stack of 2 hearths has been inserted at the SW end of the middle bay of the hall house, late C16. To the NE of it an inserted floor consists of axial beam and common joists, all with elaborate roll mouldings, c.1500 but this has been truncated at the NE end and supported by a C17 transverse beam, plain apart from chamfers and chamfer stops. To NE of this an area of plain joists probably indicates the site of a former timber framed chimney and the short space between the buildings. In the roof there is evidence of major rebuilding in the C16. All 4 braces of a crownpost (2 arch-braces to the collar-purlin, 2 curved down-braces to the tiebeam) have been retained, all smoke-blackened, but the post itself has been replaced. This curious operation. probably implies that the original crownpost had a moulded cap and base, and the construction of a wattled partition at that point in the C16 required a plainer crownpost. Elsewhere smoke-blackened rafters have been retained but re-set. The roof of the NE wing is of clasped purlin construction. An interesting repair to a tiebeam one bay from the SW end consists of a splint connected to the tiebeam by a joint not unlike a trait-de-Jupiter scarf, with large edge-pegs and hand-made nails, implying a sophisticated carpentry technique, probably no later than the C17.

Listing NGR: TL6032417311