Moor Cottage

Moor Cottage is a small three-bay, two-storey detached cottage on North Warnborough Street in Odiham, originally built in timber-frame and dated to 1649. An inscribed stone set in the chimney stack reads 'R. I. K. Ano Dom 1649', referring to Robert and Joan King, who appear to have commissioned its construction. The architect and builder are unknown.

The building was later clad in red brick during the mid-18th century. The front (south) elevation is faced in red brick laid in Flemish bond with a three brick deep first floor projecting band, whilst the side (west) elevation uses stretcher bond. The brick cladding encloses the original timber-framed structure beneath. All windows are mid-20th century wooden leaded casements set under flat brick arches. A doorway with a wide canopy on brackets also dates to this mid-20th century phase of alteration. The roof is of red tile, half-hipped with a large catslide to the rear. A red-brick extension was added to the rear (north) elevation around 1950.

Despite modernisation, the original plan remains legible. It follows a three-bay lobby-entrance arrangement with one room either side of the entrance and three rooms above. Service rooms occupied an outshoot beneath the catslide roof. The stairs were replaced during mid-20th century alterations; it is believed they originally occupied a rear tower set between the catslide roof and rear outshot.

Internally, all principal rooms retain exposed timber framing. Joists and beams are visible in the ground floor rooms and internal partitioning, with the base of the roof structure visible in the first-floor rooms. The beams of the principal ground floor room show evidence of chamfers and run-out stops. Only the western of the two front rooms was originally heated, by an inglenook fireplace, though a secondary fireplace has been inserted into the east wall of the dining room. Internal inspection of the roof space was not undertaken in 2009.

Historical records show Moor Cottage was part of an estate called Waites. The Wheeler papers record that part of this estate was settled on Robert King by his mother Ann in 1635. Parish registers indicate that Joan King was the widow of Robert King (died 1652) when she married William Reeves in 1657; it is therefore likely that Robert and Joan King built Moor Cottage in 1649. The cottage subsequently passed to Sarah Draper of Dogmersfield, a widow, for £260 in 1699. She let it to Thomas Linter, a tenant farmer, at which time it comprised 60 acres of arable land, meadow, pasture, woods, and land within the cottage's curtilage. In 1734 the estate was purchased for £400 by the Governors of Queen Anne's Bounty and the Reverend Francis Bishop, curate, for augmentation of the maintenance of poor clergy of the living of Bentley. The vendor was William Draper, chandler, eldest son and heir of Sarah Draper. Historical documentation describes Moor Cottage at this time as 'a messuage or tenement with the barns, stables and outbuildings, yards, gardens and appurtenances' bounded south by a highway, north by a common field, and east and west by tenements belonging to the College of Winchester. In 1883 the Mildmays, Lords of the Manor of Odiham, purchased Moor Cottage together with 34 acres of land from the Governors of Queen Anne's Bounty. It was sold by the Mildmay family in 1920 as Lot 27 in the sale of the outlying parts of the Dogmersfield Estate.