Church Cottage

Church Cottage is a house dating from the 16th and early 17th centuries, originally built in a two-cell lobby-entrance form. It is timber-framed and has been roughcast rendered with a clay pantile roof. The chimney stack has been rebuilt in plain red brick. The front of the house has two 3-light casement windows on each floor, featuring transoms. A plank door is set under a small open porch with a single-pitch pantiled roof. The two sections of the house do not appear to be contemporary, although they are close in date, as indicated by a join in the wallplate along the chimney stack. The left-hand section features a ground floor room with very good, closely spaced timber studding, an unusually wide-spaced ceiling joist arrangement, and a main beam with a small ovolo moulding. The roof above this section is original, with clasped purlins and windbraces. The right-hand section, slightly lower and consisting of two bays, has a main beam with a wide chamfer, curved stops to the ends, and main posts carved with shields. One shield bears the initials "W" over "CS," while the other is dated 1610 and displays the initials "W" over "JS." The tie-beam on the upper floor has arched braces, but the roof in this section is a 20th-century replacement. A small, 1½-storey wing at the rear has widely-spaced studding with arched braces at the corners; its roof is concealed.