Church Cottage Including Boundary Walls, Railings And Beehive Shaped Stone Pillars

Church Cottage, Wiggenhall St Mary Magdalen

Church Cottage is a school building with attached schoolmaster's house, built in 1841 and extended in the late 19th century. It was converted into a single dwelling in 1983. The building is constructed of carrstone with contrasting cream brick dressings, with a later 19th-century extension to the east in brown brick, and has slate roofs.

The original plan was T-shaped, consisting of a single storey school hall with a two storey schoolmaster's house forming a cross-wing at the west end. A single storey lean-to structure is attached to the west elevation and north-west corner. The later addition of a hall at the east end forms a second cross-wing, balancing the schoolmaster's house.

The school is built in early Gothic Revival style, featuring Tudor arches to the doors and brick hood moulds to both windows and doors. The main entrance to the earlier hall is through a canted porch. The later hall at the east end has a wide Tudor arched door below a mullioned overlight, with a secondary door set into the corner where it joins the earlier building. The quoins and door and window surrounds are of cream brick, creating a flushwork pattern with rectangles of stone enclosed by brick around the main entrance. The windows to the halls are casements with wooden mullions; those to the schoolmaster's house are modern replacements. A chimney rises above the centre of the house, and a small bellcote sits on the east end of the roof ridge of the earlier hall.

The schoolmaster's house interior consists of two rooms on each of the ground and first floors, separated by a steep central stair. Windows in the west wall of the ground floor rooms borrow light from the lean-to kitchen and utility area. The rooms retain chimney breasts, but no original fireplaces survive.

The earlier school hall is entered through the canted porch into a lobby with doors either side of a central partition. To the west is a living room with false thermal ceiling and wooden gallery. To the east, a similar space has been subdivided into small rooms. The later hall has been divided into two spaces, the smaller to the north having a lowered ceiling, while the front section retains its original plank ceiling. A plaque over the door between the earlier and later school halls reads 'National School Erected AD 1841'.

A stone wall to the north encloses a back yard. Attached to the wall at its centre is a small square structure, originally a privy, now housing the boiler. Iron railings running between five beehive-shaped stone pillars form the south garden boundary, although two of the pillars are modern replicas.

Church Cottage lies immediately south of St Mary Magdalen's Church (Grade I) and was built as a National School in 1841, with a plaque recording this on the original external east wall (now inside a later extension). The extension is shown on the 1885 Ordnance Survey map and may have been erected following the 1870 Forster Education Act. The school closed shortly after the Second World War, the cottage was sold for private occupation and the remainder used as a village hall. The whole building was purchased by the current owner in 1983, with the halls modified and internally partitioned for domestic use, although the plan of the schoolmaster's house remains intact.