Grimbles

House, once two cottages, originally a farmhouse dating to the late 16th or early 17th century, possibly with earlier origins. It was converted into cottages in the mid to late 19th century, then reunited and modernised around 1976.

The building is essentially timber-framed, though much of the ground floor level is underbuilt with 19th-century Flemish bond brickwork employing decorative burnt headers. Timber framing survives in the rear wall at this level. Above the first floor, the framing is clad with peg-tile. The chimneyshafts and stacks are 19th-century brick, and the roof is red tile with bands of shaped tile.

The house follows a four-room plan facing south. The parlour occupies the left (west) end, heated by an axial stack backing onto an adjoining unheated room. The large room to the right of centre is now united with the parlour. This central room is heated by an axial stack backing onto a small unheated room at the right (east) end. This arrangement reflects the 19th-century cottage layout, with each cottage containing one heated and one unheated room. Both stacks are 19th-century work. Earlier fireplace locations are unclear, though most likely in the room left of centre, which is a large space. If a stack stood here, the house would follow a conventional late 16th or early 17th-century layout with parlour to the left, hall or kitchen in the middle, and unheated service rooms to the right. The back door is original, providing direct entry to the hall or kitchen, with the present front doorway directly opposite. The central joist of the putative hall or kitchen suggests an earlier axial partition once existed here. The right end room may be an addition to a two-room plan house.

The building has two storeys with attics in the roofspace and secondary lean-to outshuts on the left end and across the rear.

Externally, an attractive symmetrical four-window front features 19th-century iron-framed casements with glazing bar patterns of intersecting hexagonal panes. The central doorway contains a 20th-century door behind a contemporary gabled porch. The tall, steeply-pitched roof is half-hipped at each end and contains two front gabled dormers with 19th-century wavy bargeboards.

Internally, the basic structure is late 16th or early 17th-century. External framing is exposed inside the outshuts at the parlour end, showing large framing with curving tension braces, and the end wall includes a blocked mullioned window. No carpentry is exposed in the room left of centre, and the slender joists of the unheated right end room appear to be 18th or 19th-century work. The hall or parlour has heavy scantling joists, the central one bearing mortises from a former partition. The fireplace is 20th-century, with joists running through to the crosswall behind. The parlour axial beam and the one in the chamber above are chamfered with step stops. The attic rooms are plastered, but tie-beam trusses with clasped side purlins appear to survive. The right (east) bay roof may be secondary, since the purlins are at a different level to those over the rest of the house.