Wellside Cottages And Attached Former Reading Room

Pair of cottages. c.1800 (between 1793 and 1823). Random flint with brick dressings, quoins and vertical strips. Pantile roof with brick central ridge stack. Single depth plan of two rooms to each cottage. Central plank door to each with a 2-light casement either side. A boarded gable dormer above on each side towards centre of row. Extending to rear is a former reading room added by 1840. Plank door and various casements.

INTERIOR is virtually unaltered and has plank doors, brick floors, exposed bridging beams and joists, straight flight stairs, and large fireplaces with cooking ranges. The reading room has a large fireplace with range inserted and a large hood which narrows to the flue which is curved over the edge of the cottage eaves and borne over a brick arch inside the cottages to join the main cottage stack.

HISTORY. These cottages were built for the 2nd Marquess Cornwallis 1774-1823 during his ownership of Culford Hall, when he carried out many improvements employing James Wyatt and Humphry Repton for the hall and park. The estate was sold after the death of Lord Cornwallis in 1823 and these cottages are marked on the 1823 estate map.

These cottages, which have been unoccupied for many years, survive in a remarkably unaltered state and form a significant group with the adjacent Fieldside Cottages and the nearby Church of St.Peter.

SOURCES Estate maps of Culford, Ingham and Timworth of 1793, 1823 and 1840. Sale Particulars of sale of estate in 1823.