Truants and Truants Cottage

Truants and Truants Cottage

Two adjoining cottages in Aylesbeare, representing two phases of 18th-century construction, both modernised between 1970 and 1980.

The building is constructed from plastered cob on rubble footings with a brick chimney stack topped with 20th-century brick. The roof is thatch with interlocking tile covering an outshot on Truants.

The present structure appears to derive from an original two-room plan house facing west with a front lobby entrance (now the front door to Truants Cottage) and an axial stack serving back-to-back fireplaces. Later in the 18th century, a third unheated room was added to the left (northern) end. In the late 18th or early 19th century, another unheated room was added to the right (southern) end, accompanied by a single-storey outshot. The house was divided into two cottages, probably in the 19th century, with Truants located right of the stack and Truants Cottage to the left.

Both cottages are two storeys high. The main block presents a regular though asymmetrical five-window front. Truants Cottage has a two-window front with 19th and 20th-century replacement casements in approximately their original positions. The front doorway to the right contains a 19th-century four-panel door with a contemporary flat hood on shaped brackets. Truants features a three-window front of circa 1972 casements with glazing bars; those on the first floor are half dormers with thatch lifted over the top. The front doorway was inserted when the house was divided and now contains a circa 1972 door with contemporary thatch-roofed hood. The outshot has two further similar circa 1972 casements. The main roof is half-hipped to the left and gabled to the right, with the outshot also gable-ended.

Truants underwent substantial modernisation circa 1972, when internal floor levels were altered and all except the rear wall of the outshot was replaced; the outshot was also extended to the rear. In the original heated room, an early 18th-century axial beam with soffit-chamfered finish and straight cut stops on one end was reused. The fireplace features a roughly soffit-chamfered oak lintel. An ancient plank door through the rear wall of the outshot was retained. The roof remains inaccessible, but the feet of probably original A-frame trusses are visible.

Truants Cottage was modernised circa 1980, but most original features are preserved in situ. A single-storey kitchen was added to the rear of the left room. The heated room retains its axial beam in place, also soffit-chamfered with straight cut stops on one end. The brick fireplace is exposed and similarly features a roughly soffit-chamfered oak lintel. The cob crosswall between the heated and unheated rooms displays two large round-headed shallow alcoves on the unheated side; their date and function are unknown. The outer room shows plain carpentry detail. The roof clearly demonstrates the two building phases. The inner (heated) room roof is carried on an A-frame truss with pegged lap-jointed collar and X-apex, with a hip arrangement over the former end wall, now the internal crosswall. An identical truss carries the roof to the present end wall.

There is a tradition that the building was once a smithy.