Locks Cottage

UPLOWMAN WHITNAGE ST 01 NW 4/196 Locks Cottage - GV II Cottage, part of a former farmhouse. Mid C16, reduced in size probably in the C18, modernised circa 1980. Plastered cob on stone rubble footings; stone rubble stack topped with C20 brick; thatch roof, slate to C20 outshot. Plan and development: orginally a 3-room-and-through-passage plan house facing north-north-west, say north, and built down a hillslope. A small unheated inner room is at the right (west) end (adjoining No.1 Locks Cottags). The hall has an axial stack backing onto the site of the former passage. In fact this is now an end stack since the passage and service end room have been demolished. The C16 farmhouse was an open hall house. The roof structure is clean suggeting that the hall fireplace was an original feature. The bedchamber over the inner room jetties into the hall. The hall was probably floored over in the early Cl7. Passage and service end room were probably demolished in the C18. Circa 1980 a service outshot was built to rear of the hall. The main house is 2 storeys. Exterior: irregular 2-window front of C20 casements with glazing bars. In making one of them a Cl7 oak window with chamfered mullions was discovered and is now stored by the owner. The roof is gable-ended to left and to right it runs continuously over No.1, Locks Cottages. The main door is in the left end wall and now contains a C20 door. Interior: the partition between hall and inner room is oak-framed but most of it is plastered over. In the inner room there is a half beam across the end wall with a deep soffit-chamfer. The joists oversail the partition and their rounded ends show in the hall as evidence of the internal jetty. In the hall there is a later crossbeam with deep soffit-chamfers and the oak lintel of the large original fireplace has a similar finish. The roof includes an original hip cruck at the inner room end and there is a closed truss between the chambers over former hall and inner room. Locks Cottage is one of a number of attractive buildings, several of them listed, which makes up the hamlet.

Listing NGR: ST0260115647