The Cottage

The Cottage is a 17th-century farm cottage that was later incorporated into the Westwood Lodge estate, sometime after the mid-19th century. The cottage is built of knapped flint with flint galleting, brick dressings, and has a gabled tiled roof with external brick chimneystacks.

The original plan was of a single-storey and attic, two-bay cottage with end external chimneystacks. Internally, it originally comprised two rooms on each floor, featuring end fireplaces and a winder staircase. A single-storey addition to the north was built later, but before 1876, providing an additional ground floor room.

The main northwest-facing front has a sloping roof with two gabled dormers, tripartite casement windows, and a projecting red brick porch with a Flemish gable and plank door on the south side. The northern addition has a separate entrance with a plank door. The southwest end displays kneelers on the gable and a wide projecting brick chimneystack with 17th-century brickwork, ribbed near the tapering top. The southeast elevation features one dormer window, several casement windows, and a ground floor entrance. Flint and brick boundary walls are attached on the east, south and west sides.

Inside, the central room is accessed through the porch and features a chamfered spine beam with lamb's tongue stops and exposed floor joists. The northern end of this room contains an open fireplace with 19th-century brickwork, though the chamfered bressumer is older. The southern room originally had a fireplace associated with the 17th-century external chimneystack. It may have originally had exposed floor joists, but now has a spine beam dating to the late 18th or early 19th century. A horizontal beam, originally a wallplate within the junction of the ground floor rooms, has visible rafter sockets. The north ground floor room now contains 20th-century kitchen fittings. A staircase of wooden winding steps, dating to the late 18th or early 19th century, is located near the southeast end, ascending to the upper floor. The upper floor retains a plank door with pintle hinges to the north bedroom and a ledged plank door to the south bedroom, the north bedroom retaining the top of a brick chimneystack. There is no access into the roof space.