Nos 1, 2 And 3 Rock Cottages Including Garden Wall To The West

TQ 56 43 BIDBOROUGH HIGH STREET (east side)

11/16 Nos 1, 2 and 3 Rock Cottages including garden wall to the west

GV II

House, divided into 2, formerly into 3 or 4 small cottages, including garden wall to the west. Front block (Nos 1 and 2, now one house) probably late C17/early C18; rear block (No 3) circa mid C19. The ground floor of the front block is partly built directly off the sandstone of the quarry in which the house is sited, the stone dressed in situ to form the ground floor walls. The first floor is timber-framed and hung with late C19 or C20 clay tiles; brick stacks; peg-tile roof. No 3 is sandstone ashlar with a tiled roof, and 2 stone stacks.

Plan and Development: The house is sited immediately south east of the south lychgate to the parish church. The front block, facing west, is 2 rooms wide, each principal room heated from projecting end stacks with narrow rear service rooms. A central entrance faces the stair with a second entrance in the left (north) gable end. No 3 adjoins at the rear (east) on the same axis with 2 rear lateral stacks, one front door on the south return and another at the north end of the east elevation. The southern lateral stack is either a C20 addition or a complete rebuilding. A copy of a C19 painting, held in the National Monuments Record shows Nos 1 and 2 before the addition of No 3 with the first floor framing exposed and a weatherboarded lean-to porch (which no longer exists) on the west elevation.

Exterior: 2 storeys. Symmetrical 3-bay west front (Nos 1 and 2) with a moulded eaves cornice, gabled roof and a central C20 front door with a flat porch hood. The stack has handmade brick shafts and moulded caps. C20 2- light first floor casements to left and right, the centre window over the front door blocked. 2 similar ground floor 3-light casements. On the left return the gable end doorway is cut through the quarry stone. On the right return one first and one ground floor window to the front block. The rear block has a C19 front door and co-eval 16-pane sash above. The east elevation has a door to the right (north) and 2 C19 sashes between between the lateral stacks.

Interior: Ground floor rooms plain, circa late C17 chamfered cross beams to the first floor with hollow step stops, wall post with square cut jowl visible in first floor rear room.

Roof: Side purlin roof with butt purlins to the left (north) end of Nos 1 and 2, the roof timbers over the right end have been renewed.

An incomplete coped stone garden wall to the garden west of Nos 1 and 2 is included in the listing, as is a probably late C19 pump in working order outside No 3.

National Monuments Record.

Listing NGR: TQ5650743160