Oak Cottage

House. Dating from the 15th or early 16th century, this is an open hall house with a storeyed southern bay and a north cross-wing. The hall was floored, re-roofed, and a chimney built at the lower end in the late 16th or early 17th century. A stair bay was added to the rear of the cross-wing, with restoration work and replacement of a rear lean-to with a kitchen wing occurring in 1963. The house is timber framed with a brick sill. The front displays exposed close-studding, with the north end plastered and infill panels, while the south end is weatherboarded. The roof is steeply pitched, covered with old red tiles, with a half-hip at the south end.

It is a late medieval T-plan hall house facing west, comprising a hall, a cross-passage with buttery and pantry doors on the south side, and a jettied two-storey north cross-wing featuring an original roof with clasped-purlins, wind braces, and curved tension braces recessed into the interior walls. The west front has three-light 19th-century flush casement windows on the ground floor and first floor of the cross-wing. A large gabled dormer is located at the front eaves of the hall range, and there is a tall red brick internal chimney, alongside a battened door within a Tudor arched frame with sunk spandrels. An external chimney is located on the north side of the cross-wing, and a later chimney serves a first-floor bedroom beside it. Curved knee-braces are visible to the pronounced front jetty.

The interior features crossbeams and flat wide joists in the cross-wing, a deep chamfered axial beam and chamfered joists over the hall, and a crossbeam above the hall, a little north of the current chimney, supported by conical wood corbels on posts. A four-centred head is present on the rear door of the cross-passage, while a pair of service doors have square, chamfered heads. Framing is visible for the stair next to the rear wall. There are tension braces on the inside of the south end wall and side walls of the end bay, including a shutter groove for a window. The roof over the south bay has clasped purlins, while the rest of the hall range roof was rebuilt with butt purlins and dormer framing. Large curved braces are located in the wall that was formerly the south end of the open hall. The cross-wing has jowled posts and a central tie-beam. The framing of the south end has sunk, and false-framing conceals this at the front to maintain a level eaves line.