Malthouse Cottage and St Marys Cottage

Malthouse Cottage and St. Mary's Cottage

Two small cottages on Station Road, Newton Poppleford, occupying what was originally a single house. The building dates from the early or mid-16th century, was modernised in the late 16th to early 17th century, and was rearranged and converted into two cottages in the late 19th century.

The cottages are constructed of plastered cob on stone rubble footings, with parts rebuilt in 19th-century brick. Malthouse Cottage retains an original stone rubble stack, whilst the other chimney stacks are of 19th-century brick. The roofs are covered in slate, with that of Malthouse Cottage laid over the original thatch. The two adjoining cottages face south, each following a two-room plan. Malthouse Cottage sits uphill on the left (western) side and has a 19th-century end stack in the party wall serving the left room and an original rear lateral stack serving the right room. St. Mary's Cottage on the right has a 19th-century axial stack serving the left room. Each cottage occupies one room of the former three-room-and-through-passage plan house: Malthouse Cottage occupies the former inner room and St. Mary's Cottage occupies the former hall. The former service end has been demolished.

Both cottages are two storeys tall. In St. Mary's Cottage the front wall has been rebuilt slightly further forward than the original, and the right end wall is also a 19th-century rebuild. Each cottage has a two-window front. Malthouse Cottage's front is irregular, comprising 20th-century four-pane sashes with a 20th-century door on the left end, with plaster scored as ashlar. St. Mary's Cottage's front is symmetrical, with 20th-century casements with shutters and a central 20th-century door with a semi-circular iron tented hood. The roof is gable-ended, with that of Malthouse Cottage slightly higher.

The interior is of good quality despite the 19th-century rearrangement. Malthouse Cottage has an overall three-bay ceiling carried on original soffit-chamfered crossbeams with step stops, the same finish applied to the oak lintel of the Beerstone fireplace. The roof is carried on side-pegged jointed cruck trusses. On the first floor, the back of the original upper hall crosswall is exposed, comprising a large-framed closed truss with a king stud bearing a kind of patee cross painted onto it, probably dating from the late 16th to early 17th century. A section of the rear wall and the left party wall is also oak-framed work of late 16th or 17th-century date. The presence of framing in the party wall and the poor relationship of the truss spacing to the party wall, coupled with the owner's claim that the roof extended continuously into the adjoining left (western) property until replaced circa 1960, suggests the original house may have extended to a fourth room or formed part of a contemporary terrace.

St. Mary's Cottage was originally the hall, open to the two-bay roof. The open truss is a side-pegged jointed cruck with unchamfered arch-bracing. Smoke-blackening of the roof timbers indicates the hall was originally open to the roof and heated by an open hearth fire. Evidence in the roofspace suggests a fireplace was inserted in the late 16th to early 17th century, and at that time a ceiling was inserted at upper purlin level. The framed close truss at the upper end of the hall, now the party wall, was repainted over the smoke-blackening with timbers picked out in orange. The full height crosswall on this side can be seen largely intact, comprising an oak plank-and-muntin screen at ground floor level split into two bays either side of a king post rising from the sill to the collar. Above the screen the crosswall is large-framed. The muntins of the screen are chamfered with cut diagonal stops, and carpenters' assembly marks are visible towards the bottom. It includes the remains of a blocked shoulder-headed doorway towards the rear. The screen was painted in the late 16th to early 17th century, and the ancient colour remains substantially intact, comprising a cream-coloured back ground with stencil designs on the planks including fleur-de-lys, crown, floral and foliate motifs framed by chevrons on the muntin chamfers. The rest of the cottage was replaced in the 19th century.

These two cottages represent a classic example of an important late medieval house whose modernised 19th-century exterior belies a well-preserved 16th-century interior of high quality.