Cowden

This is a former farmhouse dating from around the late 16th century, with a probable 18th-century addition. It is constructed with a timber frame and has a roof covered in peg tiles, featuring stacks with brick shafts.

The original layout was a two-cell lobby entrance with two main rooms, heated by a back-to-back fireplace within an axial stack. A short, unheated wing stood to the rear right (southwest), and a secondary outshut extends across the end of the wing and the rear (south) of the main range. A single-room plan addition was added to the right (west) end of the main block, with a further 20th-century addition set slightly back at the extreme right end. The modern stair rises from the central room within the one-room plan addition.

The two-storey, asymmetrical front has three windows. The exposed timber framing remains intact to the sole plate level and includes one tension brace and a section of secondary close studding at first floor level. A probably 20th-century gabled framed porch provides access to the lobby entrance, with a half-glazed 19th or 20th-century door at the right end. Various casement and sash windows of differing dates are present, including a 2-light raking dormer above the porch, two 3-light iron casements on the first floor with quadrant catches, and a 16-pane sash window to the ground floor left. The roof is hipped at the ends and slopes down as a catslide over the rear outshut. An axial stack has staggered paired shafts, while the outshut has a left (east) end stack. The rear wing is tile-hung and has a half-hipped roof.

Inside, the centre room has an exposed crossbeam and an open fireplace with a chamfered lintel. The left-hand room features a plain plastered ceiling and an open fireplace with a chamfered lintel and blocked keeping place. Exposed wall framing is visible on the first floor, with jowled wall posts and large tension braces to the crossframes at each end of the chamber above the centre room, which is heated. The fireplace lintel is moulded and may be a re-sited section of dais beam from another building. A blocked mullioned first floor window on the rear wall is now enclosed by the rear outshut.

The roof structure is a staggered butt purlin construction, with straight braces from the centre of each collar to the principal rafters of each truss.