Hoath Cottage

Hoath Cottage is a house, originally a doctor’s house with a surgery, dating from around 1700. It was refurbished in the early 19th century and modernised with an extension around 1975. The ground floor is built of Flemish bond brick, with decorative use of burnt headers, while the upper floor is timber-framed and clad in peg tiles. The roof is covered in peg tiles, and features a brick chimney stack with a 19th-century brick chimneyshaft.

The house follows a 4-room plan, facing west. The right (south) end room was added in the 20th century. The original core of the house is a circa 1700, 3-room lobby entrance plan house, with a parlour to the right, a kitchen/hall to the left, and an unheated service room at the north end. An axial stack serves back-to-back fireplaces between the parlour and kitchen/hall. A front lobby entrance and a winder stair are positioned in front of the stack. A more recent kitchen occupies a single-storey block projecting at right angles to the rear of the original kitchen/hall. A late 19th-century coach house and stables extends forward from the left end, overlapping only a small part of the front, and has been converted for domestic use, featuring a rear gable end stack. A late 19th-century extension adjoins the rear of the main house at a corner.

The house is two storeys high with attic space in the roof. The front facade has a regular, though not quite symmetrical, 5-window arrangement of 20th-century casement windows with glazing bars, including three projecting bay windows at ground floor level supported on curving timber brackets. The bay window on the right end is a copy from around 1970, while the others are from the early 20th century and include patterned leaded glass in the side lights. The central doorway retains its original bead-moulded frame and plank door, complete with much of its original ironwork. An early 20th-century gabled porch includes grilles of turned balusters. The roof is half-hipped at both ends and includes a rear dormer.

The coach house and stables contain only 20th-century casements and a glazed door on the right side. An upper window in the front gable end was likely a hayloft loading hatch and is protected by a curious brick hood.

The interior of the circa 1700 house is well-preserved. Both ground floor fireplaces are brick with oak lintels; the parlour fireplace is smaller, with an unchamfered lintel and a curving back, and the kitchen/hall fireplace soffit has been trimmed. The kitchen chamber fireplace has a plain timber chimneypiece that may be original. The left-end service room has a plain crossbeam, while most rooms have chamfered axial beams. The parlour and kitchen beams feature step stops. The original winder stair divides into attic rooms from the first floor, with splat balusters. The roof structure comprises tie-beam trusses with staggered butt purlins. Original joinery remains throughout the house, including plank doors on strap hinges. Local residents recall Hoath Cottage as a doctor's house, with the service room serving as the surgery.