Abbey Cottage The Pitchmarket

Abbey Cottage and The Pitchmarket are two early 16th-century abbey tenements, originally shops, now private houses, situated on Abbey Street in Cerne Abbas. The buildings are constructed of knapped flint and dressed stone to sill level, with exposed box-framed timbering and plasterwork covering wattle-and-daub. They have stone slate roofs with stone gable-coping on the left-hand side. The stacks are a combination of stone (rebuilt on the left-hand gable), 20th-century brick (on the centre ridge), brick (on the ridge at the party wall with Abbey Cottage), and brick (on the right-hand party wall of Abbey Cottage). A stone corbelled wall, acting as a fire break at the right-hand party wall of Abbey Cottage, displays moulded paterae within the hollow chamfers.

The buildings are two storeys with a continuous jetty to the upper storey. The Pitchmarket has six windows in total on the first floor. The ground floor on the left side has four iron casements with lead lights, grouped in pairs, set within rebuilt wooden framing and two 4-centred wood arches above each pair. The right-hand ground floor of The Pitchmarket has four iron casements with lead lights, each with a 4-centred arch and largely renewed woodwork. Four braces support the jetty at the first-floor level, and a small canted bay window containing iron casements and lead lights is placed within the timber framing. A plank-and-muntin studded door is located to the left of the centre, featuring a moulded ogival wooden head with two recessed quatrefoils. Abbey Cottage has a narrow ground floor passage between it and The Pitchmarket. Its ground floor windows are three-light wood-framed and transomed, with 20th-century frames and iron casements with lead lights. The top right window features two lights. Plank-and-muntin studded doors are located at the left-hand end and to the right of the centre, the latter being a 20th-century replacement. Rear extensions to both houses exist: No. 3 is in brick, dating back to around the 19th century, while No. 5 is in rubble stone, also dating back to around the 19th century.

Internally, No. 3 has undergone considerable alterations but retains a hollow chamfered ceiling beam. It contains a 16th-century stone fireplace with chamfered jambs and a four-centred head; a spice cupboard is built into the left jamb. Above, a smaller open fireplace is located in a first-floor room. The roof construction includes four jointed-cruck trusses, with short cruck-posts resting on jetty-beams.