Church Cottage

SX 79 SE CHERITON BISHOP CHERITON BISHOP

10/33 Church Cottage

GV II

Church House, now house. Late C15-early C16 with later C16, C19 and C20 improvements and extensions. Plastered cob walls on rubble footings; stone and cob stacks with C19 brick tops; thatched roof. Irregular plan facing south-west. Now 2 storeys throughout with 6 ground floor rooms. Apparently derived from an original 3-room and through-passage plan with service room at north-west end (left of front). Late C16 cottage or service block built onto right of cob cross-wall and further extended 1 room circa 1983. Passage doors now blocked and front door inserted to former inner room. The small size of service end and passage may imply that that end reduced in size. Hall stack backing onto former passage and lateral stack with bread oven projecting to rear of cottage/service block. Cob stair turret to rear of hall now disused. Long 6-window front mostly C19 and C20 casements of various size and irregular disposition. The centre-right, 2-light first; floor window is an adaptation of a C17 4-light oak frame with chamfered mullions. The eaves rise over 1983 half-dormer at right end and over two adjacent half-dormer to left including 1 C19 Gothick-style casement with cinquefoil heads and original leaded glass over transom. Most windows have glazing bars. Main door has late C19 gabled porch with slate roof, glazed sides and shaped bargeboards. Well preserved interior. Sooted rafters and thatch over hall and inner room suggest an original house divided by low partitions (sooting over inner room thought to be original despite 1962 fire damage to rooms below). 2 bay hall roof on side-pegged jointed cruck truss. Hall has C16 upper end jetty with large framing over oak plank and muntin screen, and large C16 granite fireplace with oak lintel backing onto former passage with remains of contemporary oak plank and muntin screen. including flat-arched door frame to right. A segmental-headed oak doorframe with studded oak plank door in rear wall leads from hall to former stair turret. Hall floored with late C16-early C17 chamfered and stopped beams. Cottage/service block has kitchen fireplace in rear wall and axial beam, chamfered with step stops. End room and chamber over converted from outshot in 1983. Sources G W Copeland, Devonshire Church Houses, Part 4. Trans. Devon Assoc. Vol. 95 (1963) pp 139-40.

Listing NGR: SX7733993530