School House And Double Door Cottage

A semi-detached pair of houses, originally built as a teacher's house on the right (School House) and a village caretaker’s house on the left, separated by a central village reading room. The houses were constructed in 1895 to the designs of Walter Cave. They are built of Pennant stone with ashlar dressings, featuring mock timber framing on the upper floors of the outer blocks, and have a plain tile roof with stacks at the junction with the central block. The design is an H-plan, with two-storey houses flanking a single-storey reading room. The style is Arts and Crafts. Each outer gable includes four-light wood-mullioned windows with leaded lights to the first floor, above full-length stone-mullioned and flat-faced windows with leaded lights. The central block has a projecting timber porch with Arts and Crafts detail to the cornice and door ironwork, and two leaded two-light dormers. The return elevations of the outer blocks are accented by tall central dormers. The rear of the central reading room features similar dormers and a canted ground-floor bay. The interior of the Double Door Cottage includes a complete reading room fitted out in the Arts and Crafts style, with wrought-iron hinges to joinery, including panelled walls, shelving, and display cases. This is one of Cave's earliest works, and a significant early expression of Arts and Crafts ideals in both its architectural quality and character, conceived as a combined dwelling and village reading room. It was featured in The Studio magazine in 1901.