Keepers Cottage

Keepers Cottage is a house dating from around the 15th century, with alterations made in the 17th century and internal remodelling in the mid to late 19th century. The building is constructed of rendered coursed stone with dressed stone quoins and windows, topped with a Welsh slate roof featuring stone-coped gable ends. It has brick gable-end stacks and a truncated lateral stack on the northeast front.

The plan is rectangular, with a kitchen and parlour heated by corner fireplaces in the gable-end stacks, and a small unheated service room at the center. This layout is largely due to the 19th-century remodelling. Originally, it likely had a three-bay first-floor hall with a one-bay solar, heated by a lateral fireplace, and probably included unheated service rooms on the ground floor.

The exterior is two storeys high. On the southwest front, there is a doorway to the right of center with dressed stone jambs on the right, a large two-light stone mullion/transom window with a hoodmould above, and a deeply chamfered blocked single-light first-floor window to the right. The rear northeast side features a projecting lateral stack to the right of center, two large two-light stone mullion/transom windows with hoodmoulds on the first floor, a two-light casement on the ground floor to the right, and a doorway to the left of center. The southeast gable end has a large stone mullion/transom two-light window on the first floor.

Inside, the ground floor has corner fireplaces at each end with early 17th-century chamfered stone Tudor arch chimneypieces. The first floor has a blocked lateral fireplace with chamfered stone jambs. The roof has four bays with two arch-braced collar trusses; the fourth bay, which contains the solar, is separated by a closed truss with a cranked collar, although the studs are missing. The diagonal ridgepiece and trenched purlins are either missing or reset, and the wind-braces are missing while the common rafters have been replaced.

Keepers Cottage is a rare example of a small late Medieval first-floor hall house, situated in a deer park that belonged to the Abbots of Sherborne.