The Pea And Brooklyn Cottage

The Pea and Brooklyn Cottage is a house and shop, likely originally two cottages, dating to the mid-to-late 17th century, with later 19th and 20th-century modifications. The walls are plastered cob on stone rubble footings, with stone rubble or cob stacks topped with 19th and 20th-century brick. The roof is slate, formerly thatched.

The building has an L-shaped plan. The north wing, fronting onto The Square, originally comprised three rooms. Two of these rooms have been converted into shops, with the left (east) room serving as garages. The central room has a front corner stack, and the right (west) room a rear lateral stack, both serving back-to-back fireplaces. A two-room cottage projects at right angles to the rear of this end, with a fireplace serving its first room. The house seems to have been formed by joining two former cottages, each built in the second half of the 17th century, one within the north wing and the other in the east wing.

The front of the north wing has a pair of 20th-century garage doors on the left end, and an irregular two-window front of 19th and 20th-century casement windows with glazing bars. A late 19th to early 20th-century four-panel door sits under a contemporary gabled hood. The right end corner is canted and contains a late 19th to early 20th-century shop window with a panelled architrave and moulded entablature, with a similar moulded entablature to the fascia board above. The east front has an irregular three-window front with 19th and 20th-century casement windows; a fourth window is on the first floor to the left. A central ground floor window obscures a former doorway. The east wing has a hipped roof and secondary outshots along the back.

The interior retains mid-to-late 17th-century carpentry details. In the north wing’s right room, the crossbeam is chamfered with scroll stops, and the fireplace has a plain oak lintel. The centre room has two axial beams, also chamfered with bar-step stops; the fireplace is blocked. The north wing’s roof is supported by side-pegged jointed cruck trusses, with rear principals resting on posts. The main room of the east wing has a chamfered and scroll-stopped crossbeam and a chamfered fireplace lintel. It appears there was once a central through-passage in this wing. The listing includes only those rooms of Brooklyn Cottage that were formerly part of The Pea.