Little Thatch Cottage

Little Thatch Cottage is a house dating from the late 18th century, with alterations in the 19th century and extensions added in the late 20th century. The building is made of rendered stone rubble and features a thatched roof with gabled and half-hipped ends, as well as a gable-end stack with a short brick shaft.

The plan consists of a single room that tapers, being narrower at the south end and having a fireplace at the north end. It was likely originally open to the roof and heated by an open hearth fire. In the 19th century, partitions were added to create two cottages, but these have since been rejoined into one house. There are 20th-century single-storey extensions at the rear and the south end.

The exterior is one storey with an attic and has an asymmetrical three-bay east front. On the ground floor, there is a 20th-century three-light casement window on the left, a 12-pane sash window on the right, and a central doorway with an early 20th-century panelled and glazed door set in a later porch with a thatched roof. The attic features two small casement windows, one-light on the left and two-light on the right, along with a raking buttress on the right side of the front. The 20th-century flat roof extensions are located at the south end and at the rear.

Inside, the ground floor has a large stone rubble fireplace at the north end, featuring a big chamfered cambered timber bressumer and pole beams that support the first floor. The attic chambers are ceiled, but the purlins are exposed. The simple pole-rafter roof structure is completely smoke-blackened, including the underside of the thatch, the battens, and thatching ties. This suggests that the cottage is a very rare late example of a small house originally built open to the roof and heated by an open hearth fire. Alternatively, the smoke-blackening might indicate that some kind of process was once carried out in the building, sooting the roof timbers before it was converted into a dwelling.