Blacksmith's Cottage, Over Cross

This is a 17th-century vernacular cottage located in Over Cross, with evidence of earlier building phases and alterations in the 19th century. It is a single-story building with an attic.

The cottage has a corrugated iron roof, with remnants of a local long straw thatch remaining, set over rendered walls with exposed timber framing and wattle and daub infill. The ground floor has brick and pamment flooring.

The ground floor follows a lobby entry plan. The main entrance leads into a lobby to one side of the chimney stack, giving access to rooms on either side – a larger room to the east and a smaller one to the west. A timber partition in the eastern room screens a pantry and a narrow staircase, which provides the sole access to the attic floor. The attic is comprised of two rooms positioned alongside each other with the chimney stack between them.

The cottage is a simple rectangular shape with a steeply pitched metal roof and barge-boarded gable ends. The walls are rendered white. A pentice board is fixed to the north-west gable at eaves height. There is one window on the north-west gable, one on the long south-west elevation, and three irregularly placed and sized windows on the long north-east elevation. There are no windows in the attic. The main entrance is on the south-west elevation, in line with the off-centre brick chimney stack. A secondary doorway is located at the eastern end of the north-east elevation.

Inside, the lobby is accessed via a six-panelled door and features 19th-century vertical matchboard panelling. The larger eastern room contains a 19th-century cast iron coal grate in what was formerly an inglenook fireplace. The original fireplace has a bresumer beam extending into an adjoining 19th-century cupboard. The original fabric of this fireplace is constructed of narrow red brick in English bond, typical of the 16th or early 17th century. A second 19th-century fireplace is found in the western room. The ground-floor rooms have 19th-century brick and terracotta pamment flooring. The pantry at the east of the larger room has shelves and hooks. The adjoining compartment contains a winding staircase leading to the attic.

The attic has two consecutive rooms with a ceiling at the level of the roof collars. Exposed common rafters of waney timber are visible. Both rooms had blocked-in openings in the gables. The larger room has an open brick fireplace with a timber bresumer added to the common chimney stack, while the smaller room is unheated. The floorboards are wide, some up to 11 inches, laid over common joists. Throughout the cottage there is evidence of wattle and daub infill material within the timber framing.