Spencer Cottage

Spencer Cottage

House, dating from the early 16th century with major improvements made in the later 16th and 17th centuries, and modernised between 1975 and 1985. The main house is constructed of plastered cob on rubble footings with a timber-framed porch, stone rubble chimneys topped with 20th-century brick, and a thatch roof.

The building follows a 3-room-and-through-passage plan facing east, with an inner room at the right (northern) end. The porch stands 2 storeys to the front of the passage, and a 17th-century kitchen and service block extends at right angles to the rear of the hall. Chimney stacks project from the end of the inner room, with lateral stacks serving the hall and service room, and an axial stack to the kitchen. The building is now 2 storeys throughout.

The front elevation is irregular, comprising 4 windows of 19th and 20th-century replacement casements with glazing bars, and one late 19th-century 3-light horizontal-sliding sash to the chamber over the hall, positioned to the right of the porch. Left of centre is the front passage doorway, which contains an early 16th-century oak 2-centred arch doorway now hidden externally by 20th-century boarding.

The early 16th-century 2-storey gabled porch is timber-framed. The first floor room rests on front and rear pairs of massive oak posts with jowled heads shaped to create inner and outer shoulder-headed arches, the latter with an external hollow-chamfered surround. The sides were originally open; the right side now has a low wall, while the left side is completely filled with 19th-century brick. The front of the first floor room projects forward over the outer arch and is now carried on 19th-century brackets. The original large window opening is exposed only on the right side, where a pair of curving tension braces lap over upright studs. In the centre, the original window frame now contains a 19th-century casement with chamfered reveals; the arrangement of pegs indicates the original window was of 2 lights with arched or traceried heads. The main roof is gable-ended, with the front eaves level dropping towards the right end from the hall to the inner room. The rear elevation has a 20th-century rebuilt rear passage.

The inner (south-facing) side of the kitchen and service block includes a 17th-century oak 3-light window with one surviving ovolo-moulded mullion to the first floor rear, and also 2 bee-boles. The rear section of this wing now has a corrugated iron roof.

Interior

The interior displays work of several periods. The house was originally part-floored. On the lower side of the passage is a full height crosswall of cob and rubble, partly rebuilt with 20th-century concrete blocks. The passage-hall partition is 20th-century, replacing the original low partition, an oak plank-and-muntin screen. At the upper end of the hall is a full height large-framed crosswall closing a side-pegged jointed cruck roof truss with rails mortised, tenoned and pegged into tie cruck posts descending to ground level. The lower level had an oak plank-and-muntin screen of which only the lead beam remains. The hall side of the truss shows sooting indicating the hall was originally open to the roof and heated by an open hearth fire. Of the original hall roof only the ridge purlin remains, supported and established in a partly-collapsed position by an early hall side-pegged upper jointed cruck truss with a dovetail lap-jointed collar.

The hall features a late 16th- or early 17th-century fireplace built of stone rubble including many squared blocks of volcanic stone, with a 20th-century replacement timber lintel, an 18th-century inserted cloam oven, and a heath of unpended slates. The hall was floored in the early 17th century with an axial beam and half-beams, all with double-ovolo mouldings with run-out stops. The inner room is floored with joists only and includes a probably 18th-century stone rubble fireplace with a plain oak lintel resting on oak pads.

In the service room is a plain chamfered axial beam resting on posts with jowled heads and a half beam which is soffit-chamfered with step stops (probably 16th-century). The stone rubble fireplace here has a soffit-chamfered lintel and is probably 17th-century. The porch retains its original 2-bay roof carried on a tie-beam truss supported on posts with jowled heads. The kitchen and service wing shows 17th-century carpentry details.

Setting

Coleford is a remarkably unspoilt and picturesque hamlet in which Spencer Cottage occupies an important visual position. The house is also notable in its own right. The porch is not only a rare and well-preserved rural example of timber framing in Devon but also as early as the earliest surviving timber-framed buildings in the Devon towns.