April Cottage The Gardens

April Cottage and The Gardens are two cottages, originally a single house, dating to the late 15th and early 16th centuries. The building underwent alterations in the later 16th and 17th centuries and was subdivided and modernised around 1970. The construction is primarily of plastered cob on stone rubble footings, with stone rubble or cob stacks topped with 19th and 20th-century brick. The roof is thatched, with pantile coverings on the outshots.

The original house had a three-room-and-through-passage plan, facing south-east, and was set back from Fore Street. The former inner room is at the right (eastern) end, and both the former inner and service end rooms have gable-end stacks. The former hall has a rear lateral stack. The Gardens now occupies the hall and inner room, while April Cottage occupies the former passage and service end room, with the passage screen removed. Both cottages have a similar single-storey, one-room service outshot added to the rear around 1970. The main block is two stories high.

The front elevation has an irregular four-window design featuring 19th and 20th-century replacement casements with leaded diamond panes. April Cottage’s front doorway, formerly the passage entrance, now has a circa 1970 stable-type door with a contemporary hipped thatch hood supported by long, curving timber struts. The Gardens' entrance is to the rear of the right-end wall, with a similar 1970 door and hood. The roof is gable-ended to the left and half-hipped to the right.

The interior of The Gardens was not inspected during the survey, but the interior of April Cottage, which is representative, reveals some fine early carpentry detail. The oldest feature is the roof, which was only partially inspected. A truss in the party wall between the cottages, located above the upper end of the passage, appears to be a jointed cruck structure, with its lower section plastered over. The roof over this end is smoke-blackened, indicating the original house was open to the roof and heated by an open hearth fire, likely divided only by low partitions. The ground-floor fireplace is likely late 16th to early 17th century, constructed from local conglomerate sandstone. It features an oak lintel with an unusually deep stop-chamfered soffit and a side oven lined with late 17th to early 18th-century brick. The fireplace is described as being unusually smart and relatively small for a kitchen fireplace, suggesting it may have been a service end parlour. The cottages are considered attractive and group well with other listed buildings along Otterton Fore Street.