38, High Street

This is a cottage, originally part of a larger house, with origins in the 16th century. It was extensively rebuilt in the 17th century and modernised around 1980. The walls are of plastered cob on stone rubble footings, with stone rubble or brick stacks topped with late 19th-century brick and contemporary Rolle Estate chimney pots. The roof is thatched.

The cottage's layout consists of two rooms facing west onto High Street. The room on the right has an end stack in the shared wall with its neighbour, while the left room has an axial stack facing the right room. The cottage appears to be the hall (on the left) and former passage and small service room (on the right) of a 16th-century 3-room-and-through-passage house. The original partition separating the passage is no longer present, but the original front and back doorways remain. The house was likely divided in the 18th or early 19th century, with the inner room becoming a separate cottage, now No. 40, Angle Cottage, adjoining to the left (north).

The front has an irregular three-window arrangement of 20th-century casement windows with glazing bars. A single 3-light flat-faced mullion window with rectangular panes of leaded glass is located on the first floor to the left. The front passage doorway, positioned slightly right of centre, has a 20th-century door. The roof continues seamlessly to the neighbouring cottages on both sides.

Inside, the former hall (the left room) has a rebuilt fireplace with a 20th-century timber lintel. A crosswall, now the shared wall with Angle Cottage, is likely from the 16th century and shows a series of closely-spaced oak studs. The hall was floored in the late 16th or early 17th century with a soffit-chamfered spine beam with run-out stops. The right room has no exposed carpentry detail and its fireplace is blocked. The roof is supported by slender, clean side-pegged jointed cruck trusses, likely dating to the 17th century, although one at the upper end of the hall is from the 16th century and shows smoke-blackening from a former open hearth fire; its plastered infill is a later replacement. From the roof space, the southern shared wall with No. 36, Philomel Cottage, is visible. It is oak-framed with closely-spaced studs and cob infill, with the 17th-century roof continuing over that cottage.

38 High Street is part of a group of attractive and varied buildings, most of which are listed, located near the Church of All Saints.