Holmbush Cottage

Holmbush Cottage is a house with origins in the 17th century or earlier, significantly remodelled around the early 19th century. The structure is built of whitewashed rendered cob and stone, with a thatched roof that is hipped at the right end and gabled at the left. A brick chimney stack rises from the left end, with two further stacks located laterally at the rear.

The house originally comprised a single depth, three-room wide layout, with a passage running through the center (the doorways to this passage have been blocked). A second passage was added around the early 19th century to the right of the center, incorporating a staircase to the rear. Evidence of a prior 2 or 3-room and through-passage arrangement is suggested by two hood moulds on the rear wall, marking the former passage doorway and a large window that once lit the left-hand room. The right-hand rooms are each heated by internal rear lateral stacks. The original passage was converted into a narrow service room, and the front and rear doorways were blocked, likely over a period of time. A staircase, potentially dating to the 19th century, is located against the rear wall of the left-hand room. A 20th-century single-storey lean-to extends from the left end.

The front facade is asymmetrical with four window bays and regular fenestration. The eaves of the roof are raised over the first-floor windows, and one window is blocked. A 19th-century front door leads to the 19th-century entrance passage between the two right-hand rooms, which is flanked by brick buttresses. A single-storey, flat-roofed store room adjoins the main range in front of the former cross passage. The windows are 2-light casements with two panes per light, with transoms on the ground floor.

Internally, the left-hand room features two chamfered cross beams with run-out stops. A 20th-century grate may conceal an earlier fireplace. Other original features include 18th and 19th-century joinery, including a circa early 19th-century staircase with stick balusters and a ramped handrail. A cruck roof is likely present over the left end of the house; the visible principal rafters are boxed in, and the other trusses appear to be later replacements. There is a possibility that the left-hand truss predates the 17th century.