Naidens Cottage

Naidens Cottage is a house originating from the 17th century, with successive additions and alterations made in the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries. It stands on The Common in Shotesham.

The building comprises a plastered timber frame structure on a flint plinth, with Flemish bond brick gable ends and extensions. The roof is thatched with gabled ends. Brick axial and gable end stacks are present, with 19th-century brick paired and single shafts featuring cornices.

The original house followed a three-room plan with an axial stack and front lobby entrance positioned between the centre and right-hand rooms. The stack contained back-to-back fireplaces serving the parlour on the right and kitchen at the centre; the left end room was unheated. In the late 17th or early 18th century, a single-room wing was added to the front of the unheated left end room, and during the 18th century, another single-room addition was constructed at the left end of the main range. The parlour fireplace was later converted into a china cupboard, and a gable end stack was built at the right end in the late 18th or early 19th century. A single-storey extension was constructed on the front left corner around the same period. During the 19th century, an outbuilding was erected on the front of the 17th or 18th-century wing, and an outshut was subsequently added to the rear of the right-hand end. In the late 20th century, another outshut was built at the rear, the left end was converted into an entrance hall, and a single-storey extension was constructed between the two front wings.

The exterior presents an asymmetrical façade of approximately four windows. The main range to the right is two windows wide, with 20th-century three-light casements and eyebrow dormers on the first floor, with a 20th-century glazed door at the centre. A two-storey gable-ended wing to the left of centre features a 20th-century bay window on its right side and a 19th-century single-storey outbuilding attached to the gable end with plastered walls, a gable-ended pantile roof, plank doors, and 19th-century iron frame casements with leaded panes. The hallway to the left is also plastered with a thatched roof, and the space between the two wings has been filled by a 20th-century single-storey extension. At the rear are late 19th and 20th-century single-storey outshuts with pantile lean-to roofs; the smaller 19th-century outshut to the right features two gabled dormers above. The left-hand (west) end, now the entrance front, displays Flemish bond brickwork, an 18th-century three-light casement with leaded panes on the first floor, and 20th-century casements and door on the ground floor. The right-hand (east) gable end has a brick external stack and small 20th-century casements.

Internally, the right-hand room (parlour) retains a chamfered cross-beam with straight cut stops supported on moulded capitals or brackets carved onto the wall parts. A fielded two-panel china cupboard dating from the late 18th or early 19th century with shaped shelves is inserted into the former fireplace in the axial stack. The later stack on the right-hand end wall contains a 20th-century fireplace. A small winder staircase to the side of the axial stack rises from the parlour. The centre room, formerly the kitchen, of the original house has a chamfered cross-beam with ogee stops and features a large open fireplace with a timber lintel rebated to take a shelf or overmantel and a block bread oven. No exposed features are evident in the other rooms. The butt purlin roof of the main range remains intact.