The Old Cottage

TQ 53 NE SPELDHURST LANGTON ROAD (north side), LANGTON GREEN 8/526 The Old Cottage

II

Former farmhouse. Early/mid C17, modernised with service additions circa 1930. Timber-framed. Ground floor level is underbuilt with Flemish bond red brick with decorative burnt headers. Framing above is hung with peg-tile. Brick stacks and chimneyshafts; old stack has stone base and early brick in the shaft. Peg-tile roof.

Plan: House faces south and has a 3-room lobby entrance plan. Axial stack between the centre and right (east) rooms serves back-to-back fireplaces. It seems likely that the centre room was the kitchen and the right one the parlour. Left end room was originally an unheated service room. Its gable- end stack is a later addition.

2 storeys with circa 1930 garage extension on the right end and circa 1930 extensions to rear containing main stair and present kitchen and service rooms.

Exterior: Regular but not symmetrical 3-window front with a fourth window to right in the garage; all circa 1930 timber casements containing rectangular panes of leaded glass. Front lobby entrance right of centre behind a circa 1930 gabled brick porch containing a plank door with coverstrips. Roof is gable-ended to left and half-hipped to right. Garage extension roof is also half-hipped.

Interior: Is largely the result of the circa 1930 modernisation but the C17 layout is preserved and some C17 features are exposed. The centre and right rooms both have chamfered crossbeams with scroll stops. The right room, the parlour, has a relatively small fireplace; it has sandstone ashlar sides and a chamfered and scroll-stopped oak lintel. Larger fireplace to the former kitchen is lined with C20 brick but its cambered oak lintel is the original. Elsewhere most of the C17 carpentry is hidden behind C20 plaster. Roof was extensively rebuilt in the C20 but still retains a C20 clasped side purlin tie-beam truss.

Listing NGR: TQ5600339245