Rectory Cottage

Rectory Cottage is a house with a late medieval south wing, a hall range rebuilt in the early 17th century, and ground floor walls mostly rebuilt in brick around 1760. A mid-18th century chimney was added in the north, and the cottage was renovated in the 19th century. It’s constructed of timber frame on brick sill, with exposed timber on the north side and red brick infill, the front being roughcast with red brick at ground floor and the south end, and dark weatherboarding to the gable at the south end. It has steep red tile roofs.

The long, two-story, L-shaped building is set back from the road and faces west, comprising four cells with an internal chimney and a lobby-entry plan. The brick-cased south crosswing has two rooms on each floor. The west front has six windows on the ground floor and four on the first floor. An entrance is provided by a central brick porch with a gable parapet, a four-centred arch, and two steps to a battened door. There are two- and three-light casement windows, with the first-floor windows each set in small corbelled gables. A large central chimney is present.

The timber frame at the north end features jowled posts, a mid-height rail, a tie-beam, and a collar supporting a clasped-purlin roof. Inside, smoke-blackened rafters from the original hall roof are visible, along with clasped-purlin roofs throughout, although the south wing has board-like wind braces. There is a step down into the wing. The rebuilt hall range is a separate framed structure, with two heated rooms on the ground floor (a hall and parlour) and an unheated room at the north end, a lobby entrance beside the stack, and a staircase on the opposite end of the stack. Axial beams support the floors. An 18th-century chimney was added as a projection to heat the north room. The two-bay crosswing was likely originally jettied. The western room appears to have been of higher status, with a fireplace on the south wall. The staircase is likely on its original site in the southeast corner. The framing of the hall range on the first floor shows arched braces in the rear wall, but tension bracing in the front wall, to the north of the stack.