Grove Farm Cottages

Grove Farm Cottages is a house dating from around 1500, with a floor inserted around 1600, a late 17th century rear wing, and a southern bay rebuilt around 1900. The building features a timber frame with brick nogging and roughcast, while the front is finished in yellow stock brick and the rear wing is cased in red brick. It has steep roofs made of machine-made red tiles.

This late medieval cruck-framed house is aligned north-south and originally had an open hall, with the northern bay also open to the roof. The house was formerly longer to the south. A chimney, inserted around 1600, is located at the lower end of the hall, and the lobby entrance likely replaced a cross-passage. The west front has four windows and four gabled dormers that rise through the eaves, with a door featuring a gabled trellis porch situated between the first and second windows from the south. The ground floor windows are two-light recessed casements with small panes and cambered arches, and there is a four-panel raised and fielded door.

At the northern end, there is a taller two-storey and attic rear wing with 19th century flush casement windows and a rear catslide outshut. The southern end is stucco lined to resemble ashlar and has a two-light casement window on each floor. The house is a notable example of a long-house, with an intact structure featuring three pairs of crucks of a 'truncated' form, similar to those found in Moor Cottage, Water End, Great Gaddesden. The rafters are blackened, but there is no evidence of a ridge beam. The two northern trusses have spur ties to the wall plate instead of tie-beams, and the roof was originally half hipped, with curved wind braces to the heavy purlins and cusped braces to the collar beam.