Magazine Cottage

TF 73 NW 5/92

SEDGEFORD DOCKING ROAD (north) Magazine Cottage.

28/8/80

II Powder magazine or armoury converted into a cottage. Said to have been built during the Civil War c.1643 by the prominent Royalist Sir Hamon Le Strange of Hunstanton Hall, Lord of the Manor of Sedgeford, who was besieged in King's Lynn by Parliamentary forces in 1643.

Coursed and galletted carstone with brick dressings stuccoed over to represent limestone, rusticated quoins and dressings. Red pantiled roof. Restored by C.F. Rolfe Neville, Lord of the Manor and details largely of C19.

Single storey with attic, part-basement lean-to to north. South elevation with central three-light four centred Gothic arched window with drip mould, rustication and voussoirs, three arched lights, fixed C20 casements, iron stay bars removed. Two plain stone rectangular tablets with iron hooks beneath. Quoins, modillion eaves cornice, parapet gables with stone coping, kneelers with dentil brackets with ball finials at eaves level and at apex of gable. West gable with three-light window as on south front, east and west gable with semi-circular headed attic window with rendered surrounds with imposts and keystone, fixed wooden framed lights. East gable with central door with semi-circular rusticated architrave surround with horizontal rusticated blocks and voussoirs to arch, C19 door with carved shields in spandrels and glazing over temporarily removed. Steeply pitched roof, with moulded ridge tiles dismantled. To east three steps up to door with carstone wall with stone coping, octagonal brick dwarf piers with moulded brick caps and finials as terminations. To north partly contemporary lean-to, carstone with pantiled roof, one storey with basement. Rusticated quoins, drip moulds over all openings. Basement casement windows, entrance door on west from area. Three ground floor east and west slit windows with rusticated dressings. Catslide roof with small semi-circular fixed light dormer inserted between two twin octagonal brick stuccoed stacks with moulded caps.

Interior with inserted C19 floor supported by temporarily dismantled oak transverse beams with arched spandrels with carved Rolfe heraldic devices and initials, attic with C17 chamfered arched braced principals and purlins.

Complex wall paintings described in 1920 no longer extant: see Holcombe Ingelby The Charm of a Village, (nd. c.1920) pp.95-98. R. W. Ketton-Cremer, Norfolk in the Civil War (1969) passim.

Listing NGR: TF7229436896