Myrtle House And Cottage

Myrtle House and Cottage is a house believed to be located on the site of a monastery. It dates from the 18th century, with an early 19th-century shop front. The building is constructed of slate rubble with granite dressings, featuring slate hung over the shopfront and a steep Delabole slate roof with brick chimneys at the gable ends. The structure is U-shaped, including wings, and has two storeys with a five-window front.

The central entrance consists of a six-panel door leading to a double shopfront, each window containing 28 panes and flanked by reeded pilasters. To the left, a single shopfront has been replaced by a four-pane wooden sash window set in a rendered and painted wall. To the right, there is a door and a 12-pane wooden sash, likely replacing another shopfront. The 18th-century sashes on the first floor feature between eight and twelve panes. The lower end gable has an eight-pane wooden sash for attic light and an early 19th-century round-headed stair window with marginal glazing in the adjoining two-bay wing.

Inside the house, there is an early 19th-century open well staircase with open treads, decorated with Vitruvian scroll detail and a mahogany handrail. The doors and frames in the stair area date from the same period and include reeded pilasters and roundels in the corner blocks. The 18th-century floor and pegged roof structure are still intact. The first floor of the main part has two-panel doors with HL hinges, and the attic features a door with two fielded panels.

The cottage retains original ceiling beams, a cloam oven, and some two-panel doors. Beneath the ground floor main room is a basement with a newel stair featuring stone winders and a blocked opening to the southwest, said to be a secret passage. In the debris of this area, human bones and buttons dated to the time of the Civil War were discovered, believed to be the remains of Cromwellian soldiers in uniform, as the Roundheads were defeated at the Battle of Tregoney.