Primrose Cottage

Primrose Cottage is a house, formerly a public house, likely dating from the 15th century, with alterations in the 17th and 18th centuries and a southwestern extension built in 1996. The house is timber-framed and clad in red brick, with a steeply-pitched tiled roof – gabled to the left before a 20th-century extension, and hipped to the right. A tall brick chimneystack adjoins the 20th-century extension, and a further brick chimneystack stands to the north. Originally an open hall extending over the present 1996 extension, it may have had a base cruck and possibly an aisle, although the evidence is fragmentary. It was later converted into a lobby entrance house, with a 17th-century chimneystack inserted.

The house has one storey and an attic, with two windows to the original part and one to the 20th-century extension. A hipped dormer is present on the right. Two wooden casements and a boarded door are set in a simple surround to the original part.

The interior features a fine crenellated dais beam along the wall adjoining the 1996 extension. The attic retains possible remains of a base cruck truss. The frame and roof appear to be primarily of 17th and 18th-century date, with the south and central bays being separately framed. A central ground-floor room has a spine beam with a two-inch chamfer and lambs tongue stops, an open brick fireplace with a wooden bressumer and a small bread oven, and a cupboard on pintle hinges; this room was formerly a lobby entrance. A surviving screen of vertical planks with butterfly hinges is located to the west of the fireplace. A late 18th-century wooden porch screen and door incorporates a built-in wooden settle, which may be a survival from when the building operated as an alehouse. The southwestern bay has plank doors and the frame appears later than the adjoining part. Arched braces are visible in the outshut. A large 17th-century chimneystack has been inserted. The present central first-floor room originally had an external wall to the northeast with an opening and old weatherboarding. The first floor has gunstock-jowled posts, and the roof structure includes collar beams and rafters without a ridgepiece.

Photographs show that the building was a public house around 1900, and it is said to have contained the village bread oven in the 19th century. It was once part of the Brabourne estate. The owner has noted a resemblance between the dais beam and one at Wye College, which is dated to the mid-15th century.