Keepers Cottage, Mill Hill, Capel St Mary

A lobby-entry vernacular cottage originating in around 1700, extended to the north and west before 1886.

MATERIALS

The house is constructed of red brick laid in monk bond, with some burnt headers, and a timber frame for the upper parts of the walling and roof structure. The hipped roof is covered in thatch. Parts of the extensions are clad in pebble-dash render, or weatherboard.

PLAN

The building’s original two-cell plan form with lobby entry remains legible.

EXTERIOR

The principal elevation faces east. The hipped thatch roof extends to a cat-slide over the north extension at the right hand side. Within the original (brick) phase of the building, the main entrance is placed roughly centrally at ground floor, and corresponds with the brick chimney stack at the ridgeline. The door is four-panelled and C19 in date, beneath a segmental brick lintel that matches the timber-framed window openings to each side. At first floor there is a thatched dormer off centre, to the right hand side.

The south elevation displays the same brickwork at ground and first floor over the original phase of the cottage, with a three-light timber framed window at first floor, each light having four square panes. The western ground floor extension on the left hand side has rendered wall coverings and there is a single window in the ground floor.

At the west elevation the roof extends down to the wall plate of the ground floor. There is a plank and batten door but no windows in the principal part of this elevation. Set back, in the north extension to the left, is a window on the west side in the weatherboarded return wall.

On the north side of the cottage most of the walling is clad in weatherboard. The roof staggers in stages to cover the north extension. There is a single window in the brick return wall of the west extension.

INTERIOR

The interior retains its original plan form, with a lobby entry leading into single rooms either side of the central chimney stack. Extensions to the north and west have elaborated the plan at ground floor. Features of interest include items of historic joinery, such as plank and batten doors, a door made from earlier C17 panelling into the southern ground floor room, cupboard doors with L-hinges, and the staircase to the first floor. In the northern ground floor room, and in the bathroom there is some horizontal matchboard dado panelling. There are areas of exposed timber framing in the first floor, and many of the floor surfaces are historic, including early-C19 brick flooring on the south side of the ground floor.

The original brick chimney stack survives, though the fireplaces have been altered. The front of the southern fireplace at ground floor has been reconstructed, and the interior of the northern fireplace has been partially in-filled to create a smaller opening, probably to accommodate a (lost) coal grate.