Cuckoo Cottage

Cuckoo Cottage is a house and former farmhouse dating from the early 16th century, much altered in the late 16th and early 17th centuries, with some mid-17th-century alterations and a datestone of 1713 possibly associated with a rearrangement. It is listed at Grade II.

The building is constructed of local stone and flint rubble with some cob to the rear, with stone rubble stacks and stone rubble chimneyshafts, beneath a thatch roof. It is a 2-storey structure with a 3-room plan facing south and built down the hillslope.

The arrangement comprises, from west to east: a small unheated room at the downhill left end, probably a former buttery or dairy; a parlour (probably the former hall) which has an axial stack backing onto the former buttery or dairy with a winder stair at this end and a front doorway directly into the room; and at the right end a former kitchen with a gable-end stack. The house has been much altered and much evidence of its early development has been removed or hidden. A smoke-blackened truss indicates some form of early 16th-century open hall house heated by an open hearth fire, though most of the fabric appears to date from the late 16th and early 17th centuries. The centre room appears to have been the hall, suggesting the passage and service end were at the left end and have been rebuilt. The kitchen appears to have been refurbished in the mid-17th century, although a dateplaque on the chimneyshaft is dated 1713. The dairy or buttery at the lower end could well have been rebuilt in 1713.

The exterior has irregular front fenestration with 3 ground-floor windows and 2 first-floor windows, all late 19th and 20th-century casements; the earlier ones contain rectangular panes of leaded glass. The front doorway, just right of centre, contains a late 19th or early 20th-century plank door. The roof is gable-ended to the right and hipped to the left. The right chimneyshaft contains a Beerstone plaque inscribed with the initials IB and the date 1713.

Interior features include the left room (former dairy or buttery) with plain carpentry detail including the roof. The hall or parlour has a large Beerstone ashlar fireplace with an oak lintel and chamfered surround with step stops. The crossbeam is also chamfered with step stops. Alongside the fireplace is an oak plank screen containing a cupboard and doorway to the winder stair, probably early 18th century. An oak-framed crosswall separates the hall or parlour from the kitchen. The kitchen has a roughly-finished crossbeam and a plastered stone rubble fireplace with an oak-framed front which has a chamfered surround with scroll stops; both features are mid-17th century. A 3-bay roof between the stacks is carried on side-pegged jointed cruck trusses, the left one smoke-blackened and the right one clean. Both were once closed, probably part of the late 16th and early 17th-century alterations, but first-floor partitions have since been rearranged.

Cuckoo Cottage forms a group with other listed buildings in the hamlet of Wick.