Dove Cottage And Twells

Dove Cottage and Twells is a pair of cottages in Cann, originally built as a row of four cottages in the early 18th century. The buildings are constructed of local rubble stone with later red brick additions, and are roofed with clay tiles.

The original four cottages each had two storeys with a single room on each floor. In the late 18th century, the cottages were extended to the rear with ground floor kitchen ranges and first floor accommodation under gables. The buildings have since been adapted to form two houses, though the original divisions between living spaces remain visible. Stairways to the first floor have been fitted next to the kitchen ranges. Outbuildings have in some cases become incorporated into the cottages.

The road front presents four principal bays in a seven-window range, built of variously-sized grey stones with broad, honey-coloured cement joints. Two of the door openings and two ground floor windows have been adapted to full height windows. Each cottage has a wide twentieth-century part-glazed plank door, and the ground floor openings have stone lintels. The first floor windows are smaller casements set close to the eaves. The rear elevation is constructed of coursed local stone beneath four late eighteenth-century gables. Each gable typically has a large opening at first floor, centrally positioned, with a smaller window below on either side, though some openings have been altered or sealed. Some iron frames remain, notably in Dove Cottage, while other frames are timber. A concrete trench between the gardens and cottages accommodates plastic rainwater goods. There is a late twentieth-century dormer extension in the gable valley to Twells. The southern stone outbuildings have retained their single storey appearance but adjoin the house via a pan-tiled lean-to extension. The gable-ended roof has over-sailing eaves and three red brick chimneys with new caps. The clay tile roof includes some fish scale tiles.

Internally, Dove Cottage is accessed through a modern extension via an inserted opening to the rear kitchen range, which was added in the late eighteenth century, probably at the same time as the two-light iron windows were inserted. The rear range is at a lower level than the main range and has exposed sawn unstopped beams and joists. The main range in Dove Cottage has two rooms divided by a partition wall, each with an early eighteenth-century shallow-chamfered beam with no stops. The northernmost room has an inserted modern beam. Both rooms have modified fireplaces, timber window seats, and stone window architraves. The corresponding rooms in Twells have a similar layout, and the southern room has a surviving inglenook. The first floors of each cottage feature modern partitioning and ceilings. The roof structure of Dove Cottage has largely been replaced in the twentieth century, although eighteenth-century structure remains visible, particularly in the room above the front door. The roof of Twells was not inspected.

The cottages are recorded as a row of four cottages with associated outbuildings on the Ordnance Survey map of 1888 and would have served working families in this rural industrial hamlet south of Shaftesbury. A rear kitchen range with four south-facing gables at roof level was added in the late eighteenth or early nineteenth century. During the later nineteenth and twentieth centuries, outbuildings, possibly washhouses, were either incorporated into the buildings to the north or attached via extension to the south.