42, Rigg Lane

A former farmhouse and byre, now a cottage and smithy, dating to the mid 16th century with alterations in the 17th and 18th centuries. The building has dressed stone walls. The cottage section has a thatched roof, while the right-hand end of the cottage and the smithy have clay-tile roofs. The cottage has two storeys and four windows with straight-chamfered stone mullions, each window being three lights wide. The windows have iron casements with lead lights and ovolo-moulded wood mullions in pegged wood frames. Stone lintels are visible on the left-hand ground and first floors, dating to the 17th century. A 19th-century plank front door with a wood frame and weatherboard sits to the right of centre, above a tiled area. Attached to the left-hand end is a smithy, constructed of dressed stone walls with a Roman-tile roof. It features a large stable-door at the right end, with a plank in a wood frame and lintel, and a large sliding plank door at the left-hand end, representing an extension to a former byre. Inside, the left-hand room has a compartmented ceiling with straight-chamfered beams and wall-plates, cut on the soffits. There’s an open fireplace with stone jambs, a straight-chamfered stone lintel, and it backs onto a cross-passage with flagstones. The right-hand room has an 18th-century fireplace with a cambered brick arch and a bread oven on the right-hand side. The roof at the left end, under thatch, features jointed-cruck trusses and smoke-blackened timbers, indicating a former open-hall. In the 19th century, the cross-passage served as a shared corridor, providing access to two cottages, one on each side.