Rose Cottages

Rose Cottages, now a pair of houses, are a building of probable 14th or early 15th century origin, with a 19th-century facade. The building is timber-framed and faced with tarred weatherboarding, with a plain tile roof. It is of Wealden type, originally featuring an open hall divided into two roughly equal-length bays, with storeyed projection bays at each end.

The building is two storeys high, with a stone plinth. The end bays project forward and are jettied on solid-spandrel brackets; the right-hand jetty returns on a formerly moulded dragon post. A short brace sits under the central tie-beam and extends to the right end of the flying wall-plate. The roof has a steep pitch with gablets. A multiple red and grey brick stack rises from the front slope of the roof to the left end of the right-hand hall bay, and a slender projecting stack sits on the left-hand gable end. The window openings are irregular, containing 3-paned casements; there is one two-light window to each end bay and one three-light window to the left-hand hall bay. Similar windows are on the ground floor, with three-light casements in the right-hand end bay. A boarded door leads into No. 1, up three steps to the left end of the hall, and a half-glazed and panelled door serves No. 2, to the left end of the right-hand end bay.

The interior of No. 1 was inspected. Partial timber framing is exposed. The left-hand bay on the ground floor features an unmorticed axial beam and a post towards the centre of the front wall, which is unusually jowled into the room, with a similar post at the left end. The rear wall of the left-hand hall bay has a hollow-chamfered solid-spandrel brace springing from the left end-of-hall beam. A moulded and brattished left end-of-hall beam, with broadly-spaced studding and stave infilling, sits below this. A tension-braced stave-and-plaster partition is above it on the first floor. The left-hand bay on the first floor is ceiled beneath a cross tie-beam, carried on chamfered posts with long-shaped jowls and probably solid-spandrel braces. Other features include a chamfered wall-plate and arch-braced gable end tie-beam, a moulded cornice above a hollow-chamfered wall-plate, hollow-chamfered central truss posts with narrow integral rebated shaped jowls, an engaged hollow-chamfered semi-octagonal shaft with a moulded capital, and a cambered central tie-beam with arch braces of considerable size. The hall is ceiled below the crown post. There are chamfered side posts to a probable hall window in the centre of the front wall of the left-hand hall bay, on the first floor, and an unusual blocked hollow-chamfered four-centred-arched first-floor doorway towards the front of the left gable end. An axial beam is visible in the inserted hall floor, and a large stone and brick fireplace features a cambered chamfered bressumer and a bread oven.