Haddon Cottage The Old Deanery

HADDON COTTAGE AND THE OLD DEANERY, HIGH STREET, LAVENDON

A mid-17th-century four-bay limestone house, later extended and subdivided into three cottages, now forming two properties. The building is of group value with other historic structures on the High Street and the adjacent listed medieval parish church of St Michael.

The house stands parallel with, set slightly back from, the High Street frontage on its east side. It is built of local rubble limestone, roughly coursed, with a thatched roof and brick chimney stacks rising on the ridge line at both ends and slightly left of centre. The principal stack stands in bay 2 against a former cross-passage.

The building originally comprised four bays arranged in a line parallel to the road. No. 1 High Street now occupies the single left-hand bay, while No. 3 comprises the remainder. Access to No. 3 is via a single front door in bay 2, leading through a former cross-passage whose far end is now blocked but whose former door remains legible in the exterior fabric and was recorded in a mid-20th-century photograph. No. 1 is now accessed from the rear, though a blocked 19th-century door survives in the side elevation. Front windows are three-light casements, except above the door where a small two-light window survives, and those of No. 1 which have been recently replaced.

Multi-phase rear extensions, principally two-storey, stone and thatched, project from either end of the building. The exception is a mid-20th-century brick first floor to part of the rear extension to No. 1. The two outside corners of the principal extensions at either end, probably dating to the 18th century, are slightly rounded—almost certainly original features—with decorative head-stones to facilitate rear access for vehicles. These extensions contain multiple blocked former openings, indicating a complex structural history largely obscured by modern interior finishes.

Internally, the main range parallel with the road comprises three rooms in-line (bays 1, 3 and 4) with a chimney-cross passage in bay 2. The chimney's large open fireplace heats the former parlour in bay 3. Bay 1, now No. 1 High Street, contains an inserted fireplace against its gable wall, a 20th-century inserted stair in the single front room, and an inserted corner fireplace that previously heated No. 5 High Street. The first floor of No. 3 is reached via a staircase in the first phase of the rear extension. Very little early fabric survives internally, apart from three crude plank doors upstairs in No. 3.

Map evidence suggests the house was present by, or built in, 1654, and the inspected fabric confirms a 17th-century date for its construction. By 1979 the building comprised three separate cottages: Nos. 1, 3 and 5 High Street. In that year the centre and right-hand properties (Nos. 3 and 5) were brought together as a single house, which arrangement continues to the present day.

The building is designated for its relatively well-preserved example of a local 17th-century house type, whose fabric documents its later history as subdivided cottages, and for its group value with nearby 17th- and 18th-century listed buildings on the High Street.