Rosemary Cottage

Rosemary Cottage is a house dating from around 1700, which was raised and extended in the late 18th century. It is a small, two-storey building with a cellar, constructed from timber framing and plastered, set on a bank above the road and facing east. The roof is low-pitched and covered with slate, gabled at both the north and south ends. The front features panelled fan pargetting, with two windows on each floor and a central door. The windows are small flush box sash types with six panes each, and there is a triple sash window to the right of the door. A rooflight is present on the front slope of the roof on the left side. The layout is double fronted, and the exposed timber frame inside indicates that the front part was originally a single storey.

Inside, there is a large kitchen fireplace made of Flemish bond red brick in the south room, which includes an oven at the rear and a salt recess with a shouldered head. The south wall features a timber sill plate and a central post. The cellar beneath the north room is accessed by a central stair and has a base for a former chimney in the middle of the back wall, which was removed when the house was extended to include a shared chimney on the north side. A stop-chamfered cross beam, possibly re-used, is found over the north room. Tie beams in the gables and the central partition are exposed at waist level on the upper floor. The walls have been raised by four feet, and a flatter roof has been constructed over the late 18th-century two-storey rear extension, which contains a straight stair.

The rear ground floor room on the north side, which connects to the front room, features a low, leaded, three-light early 18th-century mullioned window with an iron casement. There is also a small single-storey lean-to at the rear. An interesting roll-moulded 16th-century timber window jamb has been re-used as a joist over the cellar. The cottage is reputed to have been a rope-maker's house, with a long plot behind it for a ropewalk. The adjoining Post Office to the north was built as an extension of this house and had separate access to the cellar.