Ilchester Cottage

Ilchester Cottage is a house that may have originally served as a bakehouse, dating from around the 17th century. It was later remodelled and extended in the 20th century. The building features a rendered timber frame, with extensions in red brick laid in English and Flemish bond, and has a hipped roof covered with clay plain tiles. There are brick stacks located along the axial and side walls.

The layout includes a 2-bay timber-framed section at the rear, which may have originally been a bakehouse and is open or partly open to the roof, although a floor and stack have since been added. In the 18th century, a brick range with two rooms was constructed at the front. The left room is heated by a central axial stack, while the right room may have been unheated originally; the stack on the right side could be a 19th-century addition.

The exterior is two storeys high and features an asymmetrical two-window north front with 19th-century three-light casements that have horizontal glazing bars. The ground floor windows are topped with cambered brick arches, and there is a plank door on the left, also with a cambered brick arch. Small hipped dormers are present on both sides, and the roof on the left side slopes down to low eaves. At the rear, there is a hipped dormer with a casement above a 20th-century single-storey brick extension that has a gable on the left.

Inside, the rear range retains some exposed timber framing, including jowled storey-posts that support a chamfered tie-beam of a queen-post truss with clasped purlins and straight wind-braces. The common-rafter couples appear to be smoke-blackened. The floor features a chamfered axial beam with hollow-step stops and exposed unchamfered joists. The ground floor room has a large brick fireplace with a blocked oven and a reused timber bressumer. The left room of the front range has a chamfered axial beam with cyma stops and a brick fireplace with a reused timber bressumer. The front range is topped with a tenoned-purlin roof.

It is noted that the 17th-century bakehouse was extended in the 18th century, believed to have been done in 1742 by William Prewett, a maltster.