St Marys Cottage

A house, formerly a church house, dating to the early to mid-16th century with later alterations. The walls are plastered cob on rubble footings, with rubble stacks, one plastered, and brick chimney shafts added in the 20th century. The roof is thatched. The building originally comprised three rooms and a through-passage, facing east towards the churchyard, away from the road. A former service room is located on the north end. There are end stacks to the former inner and service rooms; the inner room stack projects and is now disused.

The front has a regular, though not symmetrical, three-window arrangement with mostly 20th-century casement windows. Two late 17th- to early 18th-century three-light flat-faced mullion windows are present at the first floor level; the central lights are casements. The central window has a 19th-century casement, while the outer lights of the left window contain small rectangular panes of leaded glass, and the outer lights of the right window contain diamond panes of leaded glass. Many of the glass panes are of early, thin glass. There are two doorways, one at the right end and another to the right of centre, both with late 19th-century porches with steeply-pitched thatched gabled roofs supported by rustic posts. The front wall slightly breaks forward near the centre. The roof is gable-ended to the left (south) and extends over the disused stack; it is hipped to the right. Tall 20th-century chimney shafts are located on opposing corners.

Inside, the house has been significantly altered. A single, large-scantling, side-pegged jointed cruck truss remains over the hall, blackened by smoke, indicating the original hall was open to the roof and heated by an open hearth. Fragments of a 16th-century plank-and-muntin screen remain in the hall. The hall was floored in the 17th century with a chamfered and stop-chamfered spine beam with run-out stops. The smaller inner room contains remains of a large 17th-century stack, which was converted into an alcove with a rear window in the 20th century; the original oak lintel is now in the garden. The inner room and service end were reroofed in the 19th century. To the rear, a two-window front features 20th-century casements, and a projecting stair turret is located at the north end (service end).