The Cottage

The Cottage is a small house, likely built in the 16th century, with modifications made in the 17th, 18th, and 20th centuries. It features painted sandstone with a dressed sandstone front and a hipped plain tile roof. The house has stacks at the sides with rebuilt brick shafts.

The layout consists of a two-room plan with a central entrance into the right-hand room, where straight stairs are located against the partition, and a 20th-century wing at the rear. Originally, both rooms were open to the roof and heated by separate open hearth fires, divided by a closed truss. It may have been part of a larger range. In the 17th century, floors were inserted, and a side stack was built to serve the left room, while the right-hand room may have been unheated after the floor was added. The house was refronted in the 18th century, although one of the window keyblocks bears the date 1670.

The exterior is two storeys high with a symmetrical two-window west front. It features 19th or 20th-century three-light casements with glazing bars and keystones to flat arches. The ground floor left window has an 18th-century casement and keystone with an inset wooden tablet inscribed with illegible initials, the name "Jay," and the date 1670. The central doorway has a 19th-century plank door, with casements on the returns and a 20th-century single-storey wing at the rear.

Inside, the left-hand room has chamfered axial beams with ogee stops, a large fireplace with a chamfered cambered timber lintel, and sections of 17th or 18th-century moulded plaster cornice. The right-hand room features a roughly chamfered axial beam, exposed joists, and a 20th-century fireplace. On the first floor, the closed truss is exposed; it is a raised cruck with a cambered morticed collar, infilled with wattle-and-daub and smoke-blackened on both sides, which is evident in the roof space. The purlins appear to be trenched, but the trenched diagonal ridgepiece is missing. The common rafters have been removed, and a 20th-century roof has been built above.

The name "Jay" on the keyblock is reputedly associated with a mason from the Wilton estate.