Knights Cottage

Knights Cottage is a house, originally two cottages, dating to the mid- to late 17th century, with some 19th-century alterations and an extension. The cottages were united and modernized in 1959. The construction is of plastered cob on stone rubble footings, with cob stacks topped with 19th and 20th-century brick, and thatch to the main block and slate to the 19th-century extension.

The house follows a five-room plan, facing south. The westernmost room is a 19th-century extension, believed to have been a shoemaker’s shop and heated by a rear, lateral stack. The remaining core of the building, dating to the mid- to late 17th century, was constructed as a pair of mirror-image two-room cottages, each comprising a small, unheated inner room, likely a dairy or buttery, and a larger outer living room with a gable-end stack. The left inner room has been converted into an entrance hall containing the main stair, and the right inner room to a kitchen. Formerly, each cottage had a stair alongside the chimneystack, but both have since been removed.

The house appears as an irregular six-window front, featuring 20th-century casement windows with glazing bars, supported by two plastered brick raking buttresses. The main front doorway is roughly central, constructed in the 20th century and containing a plank door under a contemporary thatched roof. A 20th-century insertion, it replaces one of two original central doorways; the left one is now blocked by a window, and the right remains, containing a 20th-century French window. The rear wall has corresponding 20th-century casement windows, including a small bay window that replaced a projecting 19th-century privy that originally flushed into a brook. The roof is gable-ended.

The 17th-century interior section is well-preserved. The original carpentry detail remains in both former living rooms, each featuring a chamfered and scroll-stopped crossbeam. The crossbeam in the right-end room has notable ‘nick’ detail added to each stop. Both rooms have plastered stone rubble fireplaces with oak lintels, including some brick patching. The left fireplace lintel soffit has been cut back, while the right one remains intact and is chamfered, both containing oven doorways. The ground floor doorways are unusually wide, although the reason for this is unknown. The roof structure features A-frame trusses with pegged dovetail-shaped lap-jointed collars, supported on wall posts. Knights Cottage represents an early survival of a pair of small, artisan-class cottages and contributes to the group value of listed buildings in the village.