Castle Cottage

Castle Cottage is a cottage dating from the 16th to 17th centuries. It is timber-framed with a brick and flint exterior, and has a thatched roof. Originally two to three bays wide with a gable facing the road, it is a single-storey building with an attic. The timber framing is three panels high, with colourwashed brick noggings, and features jowled posts to the gable end and a roof with clasped purlins. The timber frame appears to be from two distinct periods. On the right-hand elevation is a boarded door within a porch, and to the left, a large stone stack dating back to the 15th century, offset on both sides, with a moulded string course and evidence of an earlier roofline. This stack features a circular flue. A further flue was added to the rear of the building. The windows are irregular in design. The thatch sweeps over one dormer and is half-hipped at the rear. The cottage may be part of the remains of the hospital of St John, founded in 1279. It is also known that Sir Thomas Willis, a physician of local importance, was born here in 1620-21.