Hill View Cottage

Hill View Cottage is a house, originally a farmhouse, dating from the mid-16th century, with later additions and alterations. Built of painted local limestone rubble, the roof is covered with Double Roman clay tiles. The house was initially planned with three rooms and a cross passage, but has since been extended by an additional bay at each end.

The south elevation has three modern casement windows on the ground floor, one to the west and two to the east of the entrance to the cross passage. A similar timber casement window sits above the easternmost window at first floor level. Approximately 30cm below the current eaves, a horizontal ledge in the masonry indicates the former height of the wall plate of the original roof. The north elevation mirrors the south, with one window below the cross passage door and one above the hall bay. Three flat-roofed dormers, each with a timber casement window, break through the eaves. Two squat buttresses, one capped with clay tiles, are also present.

Inside, the original layout remains evident, though the dividing screen in the cross passage has been removed. The lower service room retains a transverse floor beam with run-out stops and a slot in the soffit which would have held the screen’s vertical panels – this slot stops short of the north wall, indicating the doorway to the service room. A substantial axial chimney stack rises on the upper hall side of the passage, featuring a large bressumer with scrolled or run-out stops and a later bread oven built beneath. The hall bay ceiling has an intersecting structure of deeply chamfered beams with flat scroll or diamond stops, with the central transverse and axial beams pegged to chamfered beams framing the hall bay. A small winder stair is set within the chimney stack, leading from the passage to the hall. A further room lies beyond, and is heated by a gable-end stack. Evidence suggests the passage wall was once raised to accommodate a thatched roof.

Hill View Cottage is considered to be of special architectural interest due to its late medieval farmhouse plan, and its structural carpentry, including the transverse floor beam, the intersecting ceiling beams of the hall bay, and the significant axial chimney stack in the hall.