Former cottage to rear of No 100 (Job's Farm)

SU8496057244

FARNBOROUGH SANDY LANE Former cottage to rear of No 100 (Job's Farm)

10-JAN-1990

II A C18 three-bay end chimney stack cottage with hipped roof. Minor C20 alterations.

MATERIALS: Timber framed with later brick infill. In 2010 the part corrugated roof was part covered in plastic sheet. External brick stack at the west end. The brickwork to the central bay, front and rear, is in Flemish bond, the remainder in stretcher bond.

EXTERIOR: The front (south) elevation has a C19 plank door and two-light four-pane wood casement window in the west bay, and a casement window frame in each of the other bays. At the rear the right bay of the cottage is of rebuilt brick.

INTERIOR: The bays are divided by irregularly shaped tie-beams with heavy straight braces to principal rafters forming a partition with exposed studding in the plastered walls to the middle bay and above the tie-beam in the east end bay. There are also some plastered wattle partition walls and the remnants of a lath ceiling at purlin height in places. The C18, through-purlin roof structure employs poles as purlins and early light scantling rafters largely survive. In the west end bay is a fireplace with timber bressumer on brick piers and a bread oven.The cottage has a newly-laid cement floor.

HISTORY: The cottage is shown on the enclosure award map of 1855 and the Tithe map of 1844, and the construction of the building indicates that it had its origins in the C18. The cottage was built within an enclosure on the southern edge of Hawley Common, and appears to have been one of a number of such buildings within their own enclosures parcelled off from the Common. The cottage is associated by name with Job's Farm, although the 1888 map shows that Job's Farm was some 170m to the south-west. It is possible that the cottage originated as either a farm workers' cottage associated with Job's Farm, or as the dwelling of an independent subsistence farmer dependent on the Common for a living. In the late C20 the cottage was used as a small museum by the former owner, then for storage when a lean-to at the west and one at the east end, depicted on the 1888 map, were removed.

REASONS FOR DESIGNATION: The Former Cottage to the rear of Job's Farm is designated at Grade II for the following principal reasons: * Architectural interest: this C18 cottage retains a significant amount of original fabric and plan form. * Historic interest: as a rare little-altered survival that illustrates the life of commoners and local and national agricultural demography.