Chapel Cottage

Chapel Cottage

A cottage orné in the Gothick style, possibly originally an estate cottage or toll cottage, now a house. The building is dated 1835 on a brick to the left of the principal entrance, marked with the initials JH. Later twentieth-century rear extensions and a conservatory are of no special interest.

The cottage is constructed of knapped flint with some flint galleting, with handmade red brick quoins and window dressings. The hipped roof was retiled with plain tiles in the mid twentieth century with bonnet-hip tiles, though an original brick chimneystack remains.

The front or north elevation is symmetrical, featuring a central round-headed surround with a ledged plank door flanked by round-headed windows. These windows have original wooden Y-tracery Gothick casements with diamond-leaded lights in the top of the Y. The east side is similarly symmetrical, with a central round-headed entrance that has been blocked and filled with knapped flints, flanked by two identical round-headed casement windows with Y tracery. Original walls of unknapped flints appear on the northern part of the east side and the eastern part of the south side. The external wall on the south side is now internal, as a later twentieth-century conservatory and a rectangular flat-roofed extension were added to the south-east.

Internally, the north room stretches the full width of the building and retains a brick hearth, though no fireplace survives. A nineteenth-century ledged plank door in the south wall was later sawn in two to create a Dutch door. The east room forms part of the original building. The roof structure consists of thin rafters with ridgepiece, thin purlins and collars; some rafters may be original, but most timbers appear to have been replaced in the mid twentieth century.

The brick dated 1835 is the probable date of construction. Early Ordnance Survey maps show no chapel nearby, and the building is too small and lacks chapel features, so its name may derive from the Gothick style of the casement windows. It was likely built as an estate cottage, possibly for a farm labourer, or may have been a toll cottage given its position near a road junction. The original building comprised the north and east rooms. It first appears on the 1885 Ordnance Survey map as a rectangular structure with a detached outbuilding to the south-east and a small detached building further south-west, probably a privy. Both appear on the 1896 edition, but the privy was gone by 1908, and the outbuilding was demolished after 1939.