38, High Street

EAST BUDLEIGH HIGH STREET (east side) East SY 0684 Budleigh 8/104 No. 38

GV II Cottage, once part of a larger house. C16 origins, much rebuilt in the C17 and modernised circa 1980. Plastered cob on stone rubble footings; stone rubble or brick stacks topped with late C19 brick and contemporary Rolle Estate chimney pots; thatch roof. 2-room plan cottage facing west onto High Street. The right room has an end stack in the party wall there and the left room has an axial stack backing onto the right room. In fact the cottage appears to comprise the hall (to left) and former passage and small service end room (to right) of a C16 3-room-and-through-passage plan house with the hall stack backing onto the former passage. The lower passage partition no longer survives but there are still opposing front and back doorways. The house was probably split up in the C18 or early C19 at which time the inner room became a separate cottage; now No. 40 Angle Cottage (q.v) adjoining to left (north). 2 storeys. Irregular 3-window front of C20 casements with glazing bars except that first floor left which is probably C18; a 3-light flat-faced mullion window containing rectangular panes of leaded glass. Front passage doorway right of centre contains a C20 door. The roof runs continuously right and left over the neighbouring cottages. Interior. The former hall is the left room. The fireplace has been rebuilt, it is plastered with a C20 replacement timber lintel. At the upper end crosswall (now the party wall with Angle Cottage) is probably C16 and a series of close-set oak studs are exposed. The hall was floored in the late C16-early C17 with a soffit-chamfered and step-stopped crossbeam. No carpentry detail is exposed in the right room and the fireplace there is blocked. The roof is carried on side-pegged jointed cruck trusses. They are probably C17 since they are of relatively slender scantling and clean. However the one at the upper end of the hall is C16 and is smoke-blackened from an open hearth fire. Its plastered infil is secondary and clean. From the roofspace it is possible to see that the southern party wall (with No.36, Philomel Cottage (q.v.)) is oak-framed with close-set studs and cob infil. Furthermore the C17 roof continues over that cottage. 38 High Street is one of a group of attractive and varied group of buildings, most of them listed, in the vicinity of the Church of All Saints (q.v.).

Listing NGR: SY0664484893