Old Post Office Cottage

Small house, dating to circa 1720-30, with minimal later modernisation. The house is timber-framed with coursed sandstone footings; the front is weatherboarded, while the rest is hung with peg-tile. It has brick stacks on stone bases and brick chimney shafts, and a peg-tile roof.

The plan is of a small, two-room house facing southwest towards the churchyard of the Church of St Mary. A central front doorway leads to an entrance hall containing the main staircase. Rooms flank either side of the entrance hall, each with a diagonal corner fireplace facing the rear. The flues join above first floor level into a single, central rear chimneyshaft. A lower outshot provides services to the rear, and a kitchen/bakehouse stack is in the rear wall of the outshot.

The main block is two storeys high, with attics in the roofspace and a cellar below. A secondary, lean-to outshot is attached to the right end.

The exterior presents a well-preserved and attractive front with early 18th century 12-pane sash windows, featuring fat glazing bars and moulded timber cornices over the ground floor windows. The central doorway, reached by a few stone steps, has an original fielded 6-panel door and an eared architrave to the overlight, which also retains its original glazing bars. An original, pedimented hood is set on consoles. Shuttered cellar windows are set into the footings. A moulded timber eaves cornice runs along the roof, which is gable-ended with two gabled dormers containing casement windows. The roof extends over the rear outshots.

The interior remains mostly original with minimal later modernisation. The rooms are relatively small, with flat plastered ceilings, some of which retain original lamp-hanging hooks. Diagonal corner stacks in the main ground and first floor rooms are panelled with timber chimneypieces; the panelling is fielded and cupboard doors are hung on original H-hinges. Principal rooms have fielded 2-panel doors. A good dogleg staircase features an open string with shaped stair brackets, a moulded flat handrail, and slender turned balusters with blocks. The roof structure in the attics appears to be of common rafter construction, though largely plastered. The stone base of the chimneystack in the cellar has canted sides, each containing a round-headed niche. In the rear outshot, the bakehouse fireplace is partly blocked with a plain oak lintel, and contains the blocked doorway of an oven and ashpit.

The cottage has survived remarkably intact with little modernisation since its construction. Its high standard of build, despite its small scale, suggests it may have been built as a retirement home for a vicar, a tradition supported by its setting facing the churchyard and its position within a group of attractive buildings near the Church of St Mary.