Church Cottage

SS 90 NW BICKLEIGH CHURCH GREEN, Bickleigh 5/35 Church Cottage - GV II Cottage. C17 origins, C20 additions. Colourwashed and rendered, probably cob and stone ; thatched roof, gabled at ends ; left end stack with brick shaft. The C20 additions are flat roofed. Plan: There is no hard evidence that the C17 building was any larger than at present and it is unusually small : single depth with 1 heated room to the left heated from the left end stack and a narrow unheated room to the right. The ground slopes sharply away at the left end making it unlikely that a lower end and passage is missing and a hip cruck at the right end (now gabled) suggests that it did not extend further to the right. The position of the original entrance is unclear. In the late C20 single storey extensions were added at the right end and rear right, wrapping round the north east corner of the C17 building. There is 1 entrance to the building on the front at the left, and a new entrance into the modern addition. Single storey and attic. Asymmetrical 2:1 window front, the eaves thatch eyebrowed over 2 first floor 2-light casements, 3 panes per light. 2 leaf C20 glazed door with glazing bars at the extreme left, a 2-light casement 6 panes per light in the middle and a C20 casement with glazing bars to the right. The single-storey flat- roofed addition adjoining at the right end has 1 C20 casement with glazing bars. Interior 2 roof bays only to the C17 house with a side-pegged jointed cruck truss with a renewed nailed collar. A curved, unjointed timber at the right end is presumably a hip cruck. C17 features also survive on the ground floor : the hall/kitchen, ground floor left, has an open fireplace with stone rubble jambs, a chamfered lintel with straight cut stops and a bread oven. The internal doorway into the hall/kitchen has a chamfered cranked head. There is a partition wall between the 2 ground floor rooms and the stair, which is now reached from the modern addition, may originally have been sited on the rear wall of the unheated room. An unusually small, low C17 house which contributes to a group round the churchyard.

Listing NGR: SS9424607150