Wellside Cottages And Attached Former Reading Room

Wellspring Cottages and the attached former reading room are a pair of cottages built around 1800, with construction occurring between 1793 and 1823. They are made of random flint with brick dressings, quoins, and vertical strips, topped with a pantile roof featuring a central brick ridge stack. Each cottage has a single depth plan with two rooms, a central plank door, and a 2-light casement window on either side. Above each cottage, there is a boarded gable dormer positioned towards the center of the row. At the rear, there is a former reading room that was added by 1840, which includes a plank door and various casement windows.

The interior of the cottages remains virtually unaltered, featuring plank doors, brick floors, exposed bridging beams and joists, straight flight stairs, and large fireplaces equipped with cooking ranges. The reading room contains a large fireplace with an inserted range and a substantial hood that narrows to the flue, which curves over the edge of the cottage eaves and is supported by a brick arch inside the cottages, connecting to the main cottage stack.

Historically, these cottages were constructed for the 2nd Marquess Cornwallis, who lived from 1774 to 1823, during his ownership of Culford Hall. He undertook many improvements to the estate, employing notable figures such as James Wyatt and Humphry Repton for the hall and park. After Lord Cornwallis's death in 1823, the estate was sold, and these cottages are depicted on the 1823 estate map.

Having been unoccupied for many years, the cottages have remarkably retained their original state and form an important group with the adjacent Fieldside Cottages and the nearby Church of St. Peter.