Maytree Cottage

EAST BUDLEIGH HIGH STREET (west side), East SY 0684 Budleigh 8/79 No.7 Maytree Cottage - GV II Cottage. C16, probably refurbished in C17 and C18, definitely in late C19 and modernised circa 1980. Plastered cob on stone rubble footings; stone rubble or brick stacks topped with C19 and C20 brick; thatch roof. Plastered brick outshot with slate roof. 2-room plan cottage facing east onto High Street. This appears to be the remains of a C16 3-room-and-through-passage plan house with the inner room at the right (northern) end. If so it is a remarkably small survival of this type. The front door is at the left (southern) end of the front and there is a doorway in the opposite rear wall but no partition between this putative passage and hall. The inner room (the right/northern end) has an end stack and the putative hall (the left room) has a rear lateral stack. This interpretation relies on the the adjoining left room in 5 High Street (q.v) being the service end room originally. C19 outshots across the rear. 2 storeys. 2-window front, C20 casements with glazing bars on the ground floor and C19 casements containing rectangular panes of leaded glass on the firt floor. The front doorway contains a C20 door. The roof is gable-ended and runs continuously over adjoining No.5 High Street (q.v.) to left. Interior. The main room, possibly the hall shows only a C20 crossbeam, possibly marking the line of the upper passage screen. The fireplace is also a C20 rebuild. However at the upper end of is an unusual oak plank-and-muntin screen. The muntins are chamfered but instead of the usual chamfer with masons mitres over the panels on the head beam it has chamfers with rounded corners. Maybe these were added later or else it is very unusual and maybe early. The small inner room has no early carpentry detail. On the first floor the hall truss is plastered over and the roofspace is inaccessible. Nevertheless its shape suggests a jointed cruck to rear and straight principal to front. Maytree Cottage is one of a group of attractive and varied buildings, most of them listed, which line High Street as it rises to the Church of All Saints (q.v).

Listing NGR: SY0660484784