Gorse Cottage

Gorse Cottage is a small house dating from around the late 16th or early 17th century, with 20th-century renovations. The walls are whitewashed cob and stone, with a thatched roof that is half-hipped at the left end and hipped at the right end. There is an axial stack to the right of the centre of the building. Originally, the house may have been a two-room plan building, with a heated room to the right and an unheated service room to the left. The partition between these rooms was removed in the 1970s, and the unheated room to the right is likely a post-17th century addition.

The front of the house is asymmetrical, with four windows. A circa 19th-century plank front door is located to the right of the centre, sheltered by a porch hood. The windows are 20th-century casements with diamond-leaded panes. The heated room contains a large step-stopped crossbeam and a scroll-stopped half-beam in front of the stack. A 20th-century steel girder is present on the site of the former partition between the rooms. The roof structure over the left end features two complete side-pegged jointed cruck trusses. A second truss may also have been a jointed cruck, with the feet removed and the principals dressed off. The apex of each truss shows no smoke blackening.