Cleeve Cottage Cobblestones Craven Cottage

Three cottages, formerly four, created by subdivision of a single house. The building dates from the late 16th to early 17th century and was rearranged and enlarged in the late 17th century when divided into cottages. All three have been modernised between approximately 1970 and 1986. The cottages have plastered walls constructed from cob on stone rubble footings and some sections of stone rubble throughout. Stone rubble and cob stacks are topped with 20th-century brick. The roof is thatched.

The building follows a basic H-plan facing south, with a short main block and crosswings at each end. Cobblestones occupies the rear part of the western crosswing and has a two-room plan with a large former kitchen gable-end stack, a probable 19th-century extension behind, and a 20th-century service room projecting from the side. Cleeve Cottage occupies the front part of the western crosswing and has a three-room plan with two rooms within the crosswing proper and a secondary third room projecting to the west, which has a stack on its outer side. Craven Cottage occupies the remainder of the building and unites two of the late 17th-century cottages, with the main block containing a through passage and two rooms divided by an axial partition. The eastern crosswing, which does not project forward, is two rooms deep with a staircase between them.

The original layout appears to have been a hall with a through-passage at the lower end and a fireplace at the upper end. A cruck foot descending in front of the rear wall suggests the rear wall was moved back, probably during the late 17th-century subdivision. The hall may have been open to the roof until the late 17th century. The right crosswing is also original, with the rear part (Cobblestones) evidently being the kitchen, though the newel stair here was probably built in the late 17th century. The front part (Cleeve) appears to have been a large heated room of unknown original function, possibly the parlour, with a fireplace and newel stair thought to be original. This wing was floored from the beginning. The third room of Cleeve Cottage was added as part of the late 17th-century subdivision. The eastern crosswing appears to be a complete late 17th-century rebuild, constructed as a self-contained cottage entered from the passage through the main block. The fireplace in the rear room here may be a 19th-century insertion.

All three cottages are two storeys. Cleeve Cottage faces forward to the south with an irregular three-window front of mostly late 17th-century casements containing rectangular panes of leaded glass, though two have been replaced by 20th-century casements with glazing bars. A doorway to the left of centre contains a 20th-century door behind a contemporary shingled porch. The roof is hipped to the right and half-hipped to the left. Set back, Craven Cottage has a symmetrical three-window front of late 17th-century casements, most lights still containing rectangular panes of leaded glass. There is a part-glazed 6-panel door behind a 20th-century gabled porch. The passage front doorway is central and contains rectangular panes of leaded glass. The symmetry is interrupted by the gabled end of the right crosswing, which adds visual interest to the building. Cobblestones is at the back and faces west, with a two-window front of circa 1980 replacement casements, some of which retain late 17th-century iron casements containing rectangular panes of leaded glass. The doorway leads into the 20th-century service extension.

The basic structure of the main block and western crosswing is original. The roof is supported on a series of side-pegged jointed cruck trusses. In the crosswing, both original rooms have three-bay ceilings carved with soffit-chamfered crossbeams with straight cut stops. The former kitchen fireplace in Cobblestones is very large, built of volcanic ashlar with a blocked doorway of a large oven in the back. The soffit-chamfered oak lintel is carried across what is now an entrance lobby but was originally a walk-in curing chamber. In Cleeve, the oak lintel of the blocked fireplace is exposed and the newel stair has a crank-headed oak door-frame on the first floor. The former hall fireplace in Craven is blocked. The reset partition here is an oak plank-and-muntin screen with plain-finished muntins containing a crank-headed doorway. The wattle-and-daub partition on the first floor above is probably late 17th-century. The roof of the eastern crosswing is carried on a series of A-frame trusses with pegged dovetail-shaped lap-jointed collars, a late example of this detail. Most joinery detail is 19th-century, but Cobblestones contains an attractive late 17th-century door to the newel stair with two fielded panels, the top one nowy-headed.

By tradition, these are weavers' cottages. They form an attractive group and it is unusual for so many early windows to survive. They form part of a group of attractive buildings in the vicinity of the Church of All Saints.