Rose Cottage

Rose Cottage, originally a single house and now divided into two cottages, dates to the late 17th century with 19th-century additions resulting from its subdivision. It is a timber-frame building with weatherboard cladding, built upon footings of sandstone and brick. The roof is covered in peg tiles, and a brick stack, possibly with a stone base, is present, along with a chimneyshaft.

The house is situated on a hillside, with No. 1 (the downhill side) containing a one-room plan and a single-storey bakehouse to the rear, featuring a gable-end stack. The bakehouse is original or early. A one-room plan extension was added in the 19th century and used as a shop, reportedly a cobbler’s. No. 2, to the right, has a two-room plan, its larger left-hand room having a fireplace and axial stack shared with No. 1. The original house likely had a three-room, lobby-entrance plan, with the main room (parlour) to the left, a hall in the centre, and a service room to the right.

The building is two storeys high with attic rooms in the roof and a cellar beneath the centre. There are single-storey bakehouse extensions and lean-to additions at the rear. The front of the house has an irregular three-window facade, featuring a mix of old casement windows with rectangular (in No. 1) and diamond-shaped (in No. 2) leaded glass panes. A blocked cellar window is centrally located. Both cottage doorways are accessed by flights of three stone steps and have similar plain plank doors beneath late 18th/early 19th-century flat hoods, with moulded edges on scrolled brackets carved as acanthus leaves. The main roof is gable-ended to the right and half-hipped to the left. The 19th-century shop to the left has a front door alongside a continuous row of windows. Rear outshots and bakehouse walls are of coursed sandstone.

During a survey of No. 1, the interior revealed modern chimneypieces in the fireplaces. Both ground and first-floor rooms feature chamfered axial beams with scroll stops. The roof structure comprises tie-beam trusses with clasped side purlins. A winder stair, rising to the rear of the stack, is likely original, at least in part.

Rose Cottage was constructed as a house of some status, possibly belonging to a merchant class. It is well-preserved and stands as one of many similar buildings in this estate village.