Meadow Cottage

Meadow Cottage, Blacksmiths Lane, Shalford

A cottage of late 17th to mid-19th century date, comprising two parallel ranges aligned north-west to south-east, each of two cells with external gable end stacks at opposing ends.

The northern range consists of a stone-built cell, possibly originally for industrial or agricultural use, to which a domestic cell was added in the later 17th or 18th century with a chimney and oven. The southern range appears to be a later 18th to mid-19th century addition, possibly replacing an earlier structure. The building was formerly divided into two separate cottages, each accessed by a narrow flight of stairs. The roof above comprises two abutting builds of slender scantling. The two ranges are separated by timber-framed partitions on two alignments, creating wide north-east and south-west rooms and narrower north-west and south-east rooms. Floor levels differ as the building is set on a slope.

Materials include painted stone south gable walls with brick quoins and masonry buttress to the northern range. The northern section of the ground floor wall is replaced in brick. The upper floor is timber-framed in two builds with brick nogging. The southern range has brick and stone south gable walls, with brick and brick-faced southern elevation, possibly replacing tile hanging over a timber frame. The northern gable is tile hung. Both ranges have brick stacks with tile-hung offsets and plain tile roofs.

The north-east elevation is of two builds of timber framing. The northern section has a symmetrical upper floor frame of slender scantling with long straight braces. The southern section is slighter, either replacing earlier fabric or raising a single storey structure to two storeys. Windows throughout are timber casements, mostly of two-lights and two-over-two or two-over-three panes, some of later 19th century date. The northern elevation entrance has a small canted canopy. The south gable wall has a single first floor window which is probably inserted or enlarged. Disturbance to the fabric suggests a possible blocked door which may relate to an original gable end entrance or to outshuts depicted in the 1837 drawing. The south-west elevation is clad in a brick skin of one build, with entrances and a window coupled under a broad cambered arch, and regularly placed two-light casements.

The north-east room of two bays contains a brick stack with chamfered arrises and a chamfered timber bressumer, and the remains of an oven. The spinal beam has lambs tongue chamfered stops. The south-west room has a plain spine beam which is not central to the stack and slender joists. Timber-framed walls and stud partitions show evidence of alterations to accommodate changing floor levels and blocked openings between the rooms of the southern range. The stairs replace two steep parallel single flights which latterly served two separate northern and southern cottages, rising from the external wall to the centre of the house. Above the stair well in a narrow central upper floor bay are two closely butted trusses.

Meadow Cottage sits in meadows on the banks of the Tillingbourne river on land historically known as Steersland. The Tillingbourne valley was an area of considerable industrial importance from at least the 16th century, supporting water-powered corn and fulling mills. Chilworth was noted for its 16th and 17th century wire works, associated with the Steers family, and for gunpowder mills established in 1626 by the East India Company. The gunpowder mills reached their maximum extent, known as Lower, Middle and Upper Works, under the tenure of Sir Polycarpus Wharton who, in partnership with John Freeman, leased the mills for 21 years in 1677. Sir Polycarpus over-invested as the market declined, and by 1710 was in debtor's prison. By 1704 the Lower Mills had been replaced by paper mills, and by 1728 only Middle Mills were in production. The area was also noted for hop growing, marked on a 1728 estate map.

Tenancies of Meadow Cottage date to at least 1712, when it was leased to two yeomen, a point of interest as the building appears to have been built as two units. Conveyances of 1776 refer to ground planted with hops, and of 1786 to 'a building used as a hop-kiln with a Barn, but which building was some time ago converted into a dwelling-house', and to a new tenement on the land. Meadow Cottage, now rectangular in plan, is marked as a T-shaped structure on an 1810 estate map and as an irregular structure on the 1st and 2nd edition Ordnance Survey maps from 1871, closely resembling a sketch dated 1837 from the Godwin-Austen Estate Book.

Associated with the building is a single storey outbuilding now used as a studio. Some of the brickwork of this outbuilding is of at least early 19th century date, and retains evidence of stoke holes on the southern wall and a small internal door, possibly to a flue or oven. While Meadow Cottage is clearly of special interest, there is currently insufficient evidence to ascribe special interest to the outbuilding, which has been extended and altered. The outbuilding remains however of local interest for its association with the important historic use of the site.