Squalls Cottage

Squalls Cottage is an 18th-century cottage with later alterations and extensions. It is constructed from roughly coursed Chilmark stone, with stone dressings, brick chimneystacks, and a thatched roof. The building stands to the west of Squalls Lane and has a linear plan, oriented roughly north-south, with late 20th-century extensions on the east and north elevations.

The cottage is a vernacular building of single storey with an attic, featuring a pitched thatched roof and gable end stacks. The main elevation faces roughly east, with a three-light window featuring chamfered stone mullions to the right, and a second window opening to the left. A 1990s porch extension obscures the central section of the ground floor, where openings have been reconfigured – one doorway blocked and another turned into a window. Attic level contains a pair of dormers to the right and a window opening to the left. The gable ends have coped upstands with moulded kneelers, with brick internal stacks above the apex.

The rear, roughly west-facing elevation shows three irregular windows at both ground and first floor levels; two are in historic dressed stone architraves, including a two-light opening to the right and a single-light casement to the centre. Dormers are present at attic level on the right, and an opening below the eaves to the left. Differing masonry sizes at either end of the building suggest two phases of construction.

The northern extension, dated to the 1990s, is a single storey with windows on each elevation and a hipped thatched roof. Note that, pursuant to planning legislation, this extension and the 1990s porch are not considered to be of special architectural or historic interest.

Internally, the cottage has two principal rooms with wide fireplaces at either gable end. A rebuilt stair leads from the south to the first floor. The entrance is into the southern half of the building, which has been subdivided to create a kitchen and WC. A wide fireplace on the south gable wall features a deep bressummer with taper marks and a spine beam with concealed joists. The stair was reconstructed in the 1990s. The northern cell's floor level steps down, featuring a transverse beam with chamfers and ogee stops, exposed joists to the ceiling, a wide fireplace with a brick bread oven, and a deep bressummer. A hollow in the masonry to the north-east suggests the former location of a winder stair.

The first floor has partially exposed principal rafters of the roof structure, comprising collar trusses with a purlin. Within the loft space are coupled rafters without a ridge piece, and the timbers of the wall plates appear to have been cut to accommodate the dormer windows.