Kiddlywink Linhay

Kiddlywink Linhay is a pair of houses situated on Forraby and Fore Street, Boscastle, dating to approximately the late 16th century with extensions in the early 17th century. The building is constructed of painted and rendered slate stone rubble, with rag slate roofs to varying sections, including gable ends. Several early crested ridge tiles are present. A stone rubble side stack serves the front wing on the right.

The original plan is uncertain, with possibilities including two one-room cottages divided by a central alley, a single house of two-room plan with a central through passage, or a wing of a larger dwelling incorporating the adjacent property at number 4 Fore Street. The building was known as the Old Boscastle Inn in the 19th century and was converted into two separate houses, Linhay on the left and Kiddlywink on the right, in the mid to late 20th century. While Linhay lacks a conventional fireplace, possible evidence of a former end stack is visible in the gable end masonry. An unheated one-room wing was added to the front of the left-hand room (Linhay) in the early 17th century, and a similarly planned, heated wing was added to the front of the right-hand room (Kiddlywink). A single-storey wing was added to the rear of Linhay in the 18th century, later remodelled, extended, and re-roofed in the mid-19th century. During its use as a public house in the 19th and early 20th centuries, the central through passage served as a skittle alley.

The two-storey, asymmetrical front has two windows, with a central entrance flanked by two projecting two-storey wings to the left and right. Linhay features a 20th-century two-light casement with glazing bars on both the ground and first floors, and smaller windows on the side elevations. Kiddlywink has an early 19th-century hornless 16-pane sash window on the ground floor and a hornless 12-pane sash window on the first floor.

The interior of Linhay has a side entrance from the central passage, leading directly to the earlier central room, which features circa 18th-century ceiling beams with bowtell mouldings, a slate flag floor and a large granite salting trough. A low chamfered timber two-centred arch provides access to the rear room and appears early, though its precise date is uncertain. The rear single-storey wing contains a 19th-century roof structure and a cloam oven within the rear wall. The roof structure remains inaccessible, with the principals boxed in above the earlier room, and the feet of the principals above the front wing slightly chamfered. The interior of Kiddlywink was inaccessible at the time of the survey. A description of Linhay from the 1930s exists within a guide by Rev W J C Armstrong.