George And Dragon Cottage

George and Dragon Cottage is a house dating back to the late 15th or early 16th century, with alterations from the late 16th or early 17th century and a substantial refurbishment around 1920-30. The house has a 3-room plan, facing north-northwest. The ground floor is underbuilt with Flemish bond red brick, while the first floor is weatherboarded. The roof is tiled with peg tiles, and there is a brick stack and chimneyshaft built inside what was formerly a smoke bay.

The original layout included an unheated room to the east, now a woodshed with its own back door. The central room was the medieval hall, open to the roof and originally heated by an open hearth fire. In the late 16th or early 17th century, the hall was floored over and given a smoke bay at its western end, with a C20 stack built within it. A room was added to the right (west) end in the 19th or early 20th century.

The exterior is a regular 4-window front with C20 casement windows with glazing bars. The front door, to the right of centre, is a C20 part-glazed door accessed via a short flight of brick steps. The roof is hipped at both ends, and the stack has a Tudor style star-shaped chimneyshaft.

The interior is largely a result of the C20 refurbishment, although some original timber framing remains visible in the central ground floor room. This room features late 16th/early 17th century axial joists with chamfered spine beams with run-out stops. A beam across the chimneybreast serves as the bressummer of the smoke bay hood. The roof space shows heavily sooted framed crosswalls from the original open hearth fire, along with original hip constructions. The roof was altered and extended westward in the 20th century; while the original trusses were replaced, some original common rafter couples were retained, retaining their original soot markings.