Budleigh Cottage

Budleigh Cottage is a house with origins in the late 16th and early 17th centuries, later altered. A circa early 18th century wing may have initially been a single-room cottage, and there have been 20th-century repairs. The structure is built of whitewashed, plastered cob and stone rubble, with a thatched roof, gabled at the ends. It features a right-end stack, a front lateral stack to the main range end stack to the north wing.

The house follows a T-shaped plan, comprising a single-depth, south-facing main range of two rooms, with a third, narrow room at the left (west) end. A one-room plan north wing is set at right angles and may have originally been a separate single-cell cottage, as there is no visible internal access from the main range. A single-storey south wing, at right angles, likely functioned as a village shop. A rear outshut, formerly a dairy and now a kitchen, is present on the main range. The plan of the main range is notable, as a thin partition wall separates it from the adjoining house, Castle Comer, suggesting an original single build. A corner fireplace, served by the lateral stack, dates to around 1700, but may be an adaptation of an earlier feature.

The garden front has an asymmetrical arrangement with three windows. The front door and doorway are 20th century. There are 2- and 3-light timber casement windows, three to the first floor and two to the ground floor. The single-storey wing features a door on its inner return and a later 20th century 4-light timber window within the end wall. The street-facing return is irregular in appearance, with a probably early 20th century 24-pane fixed shop window, two 3-light timber casements (probably 20th century) to the gable end of the main range, and a door and two 19th-century small-pane timber casements on the north wing.

Inside, the right-hand (east) room of the main range has a rough crossbeam and an open fireplace with a bread oven and a replaced lintel. The central room features a corner fireplace of handmade bricks and a plain, possibly late 17th/early 18th century plank and muntin partition dividing it from the left-hand room. A staircase rises in a passage behind the central room. The north (rear) wing contains an open fireplace with a chamfered lintel. The roof retains two side-pegged jointed cruck trusses over the right-hand (east) end of the house, which are not smoke-blackened. Budleigh Cottage is an attractive, irregular house situated in the centre of Kerswell village.