Town Cottage

This is a former farmhouse, likely dating to around the early 16th century, with substantial remodelling in the late 16th and early 17th centuries. More recent alterations occurred in the 20th century. The house is constructed of whitewashed rendered cob and stone rubble, with a corrugated asbestos roof, gabled at the right end and hipped over an adjoining outbuilding to the left. A projecting stack with a bread oven is located at the left end of the main block, and another projects from the rear.

Originally an open hall of late medieval origins, the house shows evidence of two distinct phases of medieval roof construction. The layout is currently a single-depth, three-room wide structure with an entrance passage containing the staircase. There are two heated rooms to the left of the entrance passage, and an unheated room to the right. The date of the flooring internally is unclear, though timbers supporting the floor at the left end appear to be from the early 17th century, while a ground floor doorframe in the inner room might be older. Modern concrete block partitions divide the two left-hand rooms, and the wide entrance passage may have been slightly narrower originally. Single-story storage rooms at the left and right ends are probably additions from the 18th or early 19th century.

The front of the main block has an asymmetrical three-window appearance. A 20th-century porch with a wide front door sits to the right of the centre, with an additional door at the extreme right, leading to a store room above which is a glazed window. C20 metal-framed windows are on the ground and first floors to the left. A 20th-century window is on the ground floor to the right of the porch; other windows are casement types with small panes, dating from the 18th or 19th century. A buttress is located on the front to the left of the porch.

Inside, the left-hand room has a chamfered scroll-stopped crossbeam and exposed joists. A 20th-century fireplace obscures an earlier lintel. The adjacent room has a partially blocked fireplace that likely hides an earlier lintel, with boxed-in crossbeams. A good chamfered doorframe is present in the right-hand room, where the floor is missing. The roof structure is complex, containing a sooted truss – likely a jointed cruck – set at a lower level than the rest of the roof, with the stub of a diagonally-set ridge. A later roof with an X apex was built above this, with 20th-century modifications following the removal of the thatch. Partition studs, sooted on the left side only, project into the roof space near the cruck truss. Beyond these studs are two further bays of sooted roof timbers, also likely with a jointed cruck, diagonally-set ridge, and intact rafters. Bird's-mouth beams formerly supported a plaster ceiling, which has since collapsed onto the present ceiling.