Shepherd's Cottage and rear boundary wall, 36a Highgate High Street

Shepherd's Cottage and rear boundary wall, 36a Highgate High Street

A cottage probably dating from the early 18th century, renovated and re-roofed with re-used tiles in the 1980s; the east gable was partly rebuilt in 2017.

The building is constructed of a mix of yellow and red brick laid in an irregular bond. It has timber sash windows with stone sills and timber casements to the dormers. The gambrel roof is covered with pan tiles on the upper slopes and plain tiles on the lower.

The cottage sits on a sloping site that descends from south to north. It is two storeys plus attic and undercroft, rectangular in plan and oriented east-west, with end-wall chimney stacks. Two small outshuts, probably 20th-century additions, are located at the north-west corner at undercroft level (with stairs over to a rear ground-floor entrance) and at the south-west corner at ground-floor level. The cottage's south side is abutted at its eastern end by a two-storey extension of number 36 Highgate High Street, which has a gallery running along the southern wall of the cottage at first-floor level. The cottage entrance, on the south elevation, is accessed via a covered passageway off the High Street between numbers 36 and 38, which opens into a small courtyard. The ground floor and undercroft are open single rooms. The undercroft stair is in the north-west corner and the upper-floor stair is in the south-west corner. The first floor contains two rooms off a small landing, a bathroom and a study. The attic floor has a single bedroom.

The north elevation is broadly symmetrical and of two bays. The ground floor has a six-over-six timber sash window with narrow glazing bars in a segmental-arched opening with a stone sill to the east, and a 20th-century top-glazed timber door in a segmental opening (probably replacing an original window) to the west. The first floor has a pair of six-over-six sash windows, though the segmental arch is shallower. In the lower slope of the gambrel roof are a pair of shallow flat-roofed dormers with 20th-century paired timber casement windows. The undercroft has a pair of 20th-century replacement six-over-six horned timber sash windows with concrete lintels. The undercroft brickwork is laid in English bond and is also probably 20th-century in date.

The south elevation is largely obscured by the extension and gallery of number 36 Highgate High Street. Only the western part of the ground floor is visible, showing an entrance with a timber panelled door in a segmental arched opening and a small square timber-framed fixed-pane window lighting the stairway to the west. The gallery is supported on a steel joist.

The gable ends are blind. The top of the western gable and chimney stack have been rebuilt in Flemish bond. The eastern gable and stack were more extensively rebuilt in 2017, largely using the original bricks but laid in English bond. The stacks have tall chimney pots; one on the eastern stack is a modern replica of an original with incised decoration.

The undercroft is a single room with a relieving arch at the eastern end and a probably late-20th-century square brick fireplace containing a modern cooking range and flue at the west end. It is accessed via a late-20th-century quarter-turn open-riser stair in the north-west corner. The ceiling has one substantial chamfered cross beam at the eastern end. The exposed joists are deep and narrow, a mix of hand and machine-cut timbers. There is a ceiling hatch near the stair in the north-west corner and a blocked shute (possibly for coal) in the southern wall. The kitchen outshut has a pair of steel joists supporting the York stone slabs of the external stair above.

The ground floor is also a single room with an imported Classical-style timber fireplace surround at the east end. In the south wall just west of the front entrance is evidence of a blocked doorway that gave access to the rear extension of number 36 Highgate High Street. The western part of the room has a panelled ceiling while the eastern part has a boarded ceiling, suggesting the room was once partitioned. The floor is softwood planks. The winder stair in the south-west corner is softwood with dado-height plank panelling and balustrade and a plain newel post. The stairwell has an internal window at first-floor level. Under the stair is a cupboard with a two-panel door.

The principal first-floor room at the east has a rendered segmental-arched fireplace with a plain timber mantel. To the left of the fireplace is a cupboard with upper and lower panelled double doors, the upper having leaded glazing. The partition with the bathroom to the west is of vertical boarding. The bathroom has a fireplace with a plain timber surround and mantel and panelled timber partitioning to the landing. The ceilings in both rooms are panelled plywood with boarded ceilings understood to survive underneath. The small landing has a four-panel door to the stair with leaded glazed upper panels and a three-light transom.

The attic storey is reached via a narrower continuation of the winder stair with broad vertical timber panelling and no handrail. The bedroom has a plank-and-batten door to the stair and a brick fireplace with a plain modern mantel and hob grate at the eastern end. Either side of the fireplace are cupboards: that to the left has a plank-and-batten door with iron strap hinges and that to the right has a two-panel door.

The gambrel roof structure has a machine-cut ridge-piece and a mix of machine and hand-cut rafters.

A boundary wall projects from the north-west corner of the cottage as far as some garages on the north side of Townsend's Yard. It has a soldier-course roughly 1.2 metres in height at ground-floor level.