Old Post Office Cottage

TQ 55 41 SPELDHURST SPELDHURST HILL (north side), SPELDHURST 12/582 Old Post Office Cottage

II* GV

Small house. Circa 1720-30 with minimal later modernisations. Timber-framed on coursed sandstone footings; the front is weatherboarded, the rest is hung with peg-tile. Brick stacks on stone bases and brick chimneyshafts. Peg-tile roof.

Plan: Small 2-room plan house facing south west onto the churchyard of the Church of St Mary (q.v.). Central front doorway to entrance hall containing the main staircase. Rooms either side have diagonal corner fireplaces to rear against the entrance hall. The flues join above first floor level to a single central rear chimneyshaft. Services to rear in integral outshot at a lower level than the front ground floor. Kitchen/bakehouse stack in rear wall of the outshot.

Main block is 2 storeys with attics in the roofspace, cellar below and integral outshot to rear. Secondary lean-to outshot on right end.

Exterior: Well-preserved, attractive and original 2-window front of early C18 12-pane sashes with fat glazing bars and with moulded timber cornices over the ground floor windows. Central doorway up a couple of stone steps contains original fielded 6-panel door and eared architrave to the overlight which also has original glazing bars. Original pedimented hood on consoles. Shuttered cellar windows in the footings. Moulded,timber eaves cornice and roof is gable-ended containing 2 gabled dormers containing casement windows. Roof is carried down over the rear outshots.

Interior: Is mostly original with a minimum of later modernisation. The rooms are too small to need beams and are flat and plastered. Some of the ceilings still include original lamp-hanging hooks. In the main ground and first floor rooms the diagonal corner stacks are panelled with timber chimneypieces. Panelling is fielded, so too are cupboard doors still hung on original H-hinges. Principal rooms have fielded 2-panel doors. Good dogleg staircase; open string with shaped stair brackets, moulded flat handrail and slender turned balusters with blocks. Roof structure (in the attics) is mostly plastered but appears to be of common rafter construction. In the cellar the stone base of the chimneystack has canted sides, each containing a round-headed niche. In the rear outshot the bakehouse fireplace is partly blocked but it has a plain oak lintel and has the blocked doorway of an oven and ashpit.

The Cottage has survived remarkably intact with little modernisation since the place was built. Moreover, for such a small house, it is built to a very high standard. It is almost a scaled-down version of the usual early C18 house. According to the owner reporting local tradition it was built for the retirmeent of a vicar. Its setting (facing onto the churchyard) and scale gives credibility to the tradition. Also it forms part of a group of attractive buildings in the vicinity of the Church of St Mary (q.v.).

Listing NGR: TQ5539341486