Mayfield Cottage

Mayfield Cottage, Huntercombe End, Nuffield

A cottage dating from the early 17th century, with a 19th-century lean-to extension and later alterations. The building is constructed of timber frame with brick and plaster infill, rendered and painted externally, with a tiled roof that probably replaces the original thatch.

The cottage comprises two storeys plus an attic, with a steeply pitched gabled roof. The entrance doorway is set in the front gable, while the chimney stack and staircase are positioned against the rear gable wall. Originally a single-celled structure, the building is now divided into a ground-floor layout with kitchen and bathroom accommodated in a lean-to extension to the west under a catslip roof, with the first floor containing a stair hall and two bedrooms. The exterior exhibits irregular fenestration with modern timber casements of various sizes and shapes, and a modern glazed door to the south.

The principal ground-floor room retains its original ceiling structure, comprising a heavy stop-chamfered axial beam with nine pairs of slightly chamfered edge-set joists supporting the floorboards. The chamfer-stops at the north end of the beam, positioned approximately 0.25 metres from the end wall, may indicate the former position of a spere (short screen) next to the fireplace. The fireplace itself is constructed of brick and clunch (hard chalk), with a cambered and stop-chamfered lintel bearing stamped and incised markings including the letters TW and ID (repeated), along with what has been interpreted as an apotropaic or warding mark resembling the Greek chi-rho symbol. The staircase in the north-west corner retains parts of its original fabric, including the jambs and lintel of the access doorway and a moulded newel to the quarter-turn upper section. Exposed box framing of the outer walls is visible here, including studs, mid rail, tie beam and a heavily jowled corner post. The lean-to contains the bathroom and an enlarged kitchen, created by the removal of part of the original north wall and the insertion of a beam to support the joist-ends.

On the first floor, an early plank door provides access to the larger bedroom, which contains the upper part of the stack structure. Further exposed box-framing elements are visible at this level in the north, east and west walls. The roof structure comprises a series of closely-set pairs of common rafters, with one of the middle pairs joined by a tie beam, collar and two struts to form a queen-strut truss, and clasped purlins providing additional support. The underside of the middle tie beam displays numerous mortices and dowel-holes, suggesting that the timber has been re-used. The attic ceiling structure, apparently original, comprises joists suspended from the rafters and supported on a central axial beam, reinforced centrally by a third vertical strut rising from the tie beam. The gable ends have been rebuilt in brick, and the roof truss in the southern (front) gable is a modern replacement.

Little is recorded of the cottage's history, but the surviving fabric indicates an early 17th-century date. The building appears always to have functioned as a single-cell cottage, though it may conceivably once have formed part of a larger structure. The first-edition Ordnance Survey map of 1878 shows the cottage already in its present form, complete with the lean-to addition against the west wall. At that time it formed one of a pair of small detached dwellings; the other, now known as Mayfield House, was substantially extended during the late 20th century. Mayfield Cottage, by contrast, has undergone little modern alteration beyond the renewal of some windows and doors.