Beech Tree Cottage Wild Goose Cottage

Beech Tree Cottage and Wild Goose Cottage are two cottages, originally a single house, dating to the late 16th to early 17th century. They were refurbished and enlarged in the 19th century, and thoroughly modernised around 1965. The cottages are constructed of plastered cob on stone rubble footings, with a brick and stone rubble extension; brick and stone rubble stacks topped with 19th and 20th-century brick; and a thatched roof, with tile and slate to outshots.

The original house appears to have included two rooms of Wild Goose Cottage and an adjoining room of Beech Tree Cottage, although the original layout is difficult to determine due to later alterations. The party wall may be an original crosswall. Wild Goose Cottage has a right-end stack with a winder stair alongside. A circa 1960 lean-to garage is attached to the right end of Wild Goose Cottage, and circa 1970 service outshots are at the rear. Beech Tree Cottage has a probable late 19th-century one-room plan extension on the left end, and the former end stack appears to have been turned around to serve the new room. A circa 1965 porch, set back from the front and returning along the back as service outshots, is on the left end of Beech Tree Cottage.

The main block is two storeys high and features an irregular five-window front with 19th and mostly 20th-century casement windows with glazing bars: three to Beech Tree Cottage, and a more or less symmetrical two-window arrangement to Wild Goose Cottage. Wild Goose Cottage has a central 20th-century plank door and a contemporary porch with a semi-conical thatched roof on plain posts. Beech Tree Cottage has a 20th-century glazed door at its right end, with a matching porch. The main door, however, is through the porch itself. The late 19th-century extension has a ground-floor 20th-century curving bay window with a thatched roof.

The main roof is gable-ended to the right and hipped to the left, with the eaves and ridge rising over the late 19th-century extension. The interior has been largely rebuilt in the 19th or 20th century. The only remaining late 16th- to early 17th-century features are in the older room of Beech Tree Cottage, which has a soffit-chamfered crossbeam with one step stop (the others having been removed). The roof is carried on a plastered jointed cruck roof, and the roof space shows the top of the truss to be charred, suggesting the house may have been rebuilt after a fire in the 18th or 19th century. Within the main heated room of Wild Goose Cottage, a circa 1970 teak crossbeam has been introduced, and the fireplace has been reduced in size with 19th-century brick. The roofspace here is inaccessible, but the plastered feet of A-frame trusses are visible.