Chalk Pit Cottages

Chalk Pit Cottages are a pair of early 19th-century cottages, originally part of a terrace of four, located on Alton Road, Odiham. The cottages have undergone alterations in the 19th and 20th centuries. The external walls are largely reconstituted chalk on a flint plinth, with some brick rendering and limewash. The rear wall was rebuilt in concrete block around 1968, the south (right) gable in brick in the 1960s, and the entire building was repainted in 1993. The roof is of plain tiles, with a half-hipped left end and a brick chimney with two terracotta pots.

The cottages are mirror-images of each other, each consisting of two cells with a shared front and rear stack where the staircases were positioned. A pedestrian passage formerly existed at the right side of the right-hand cottage. The cottages are one storey high with attics. Each cottage features an off-centre old board door, with cover strips on the left, flanked by two-light windows. These windows originally had diamond-leaded casements, but now have two-pane lights; the right-hand window is smaller and has four panes. Rafter feet are visible at the eaves. Each cottage has a small central gabled dormer with a two-light window (formerly leaded), a brick gable, and narrow wooden bargeboards. The rear of the cottages was largely rebuilt. The left-hand cottage has paired two-pane windows to the upper floor. A rounded brick wall, built in header bond, marks the former throughway. The left-hand gable has a recessed attic storey featuring a wooden-pegged wood-framed window of two lights with diamond leading, tied to iron staddle bars; the left-hand light is an opening casement. The right-hand gable has been rebuilt with a double garage door.

Internally, the cottages feature brick paving, wooden floorboards to the attic, and partition walls constructed of plastered laths and light-scantling timber framing with brick infill. Original board doors with old fittings remain. The chimney in the right-hand cottage retains a possible 19th-century cast-iron range, pot hood, and chain. The left-hand cottage retains the upper section of a dog-leg wooden stair and the gable window has an iron catch and a chamfered wooden mullion. The roof is underdrawn and plastered and appears to be of paired rafter construction with collards.

The cottages are situated at the entrance to Odiham Chalk Pit, which is depicted on a map from 1739. They themselves do not appear on this map and are among a small number of chalk buildings in Odiham, representing the likely easternmost use of reconstituted chalk in southern England.