Knowle Farm Cottages

Farmhouse, now two cottages, with a core dating back to the 16th century, subdivided and remodelled in the 18th century. The walls are plastered cob on rubble footings, with rubble and brick stacks and a wheat reed thatched roof. Originally a 3-room and through-passage house, it was converted into two 2-room cottages facing north; the western cottage occupies the former hall and inner room, while the eastern cottage occupies the former passage and service room. The cottages have a roughly irregular 4-window front, with two windows to each. The left cottage has early 20th-century casement windows and a central door with a 20th-century slate-roofed porch. The right cottage has 20th-century casement windows with glazing bars on the ground floor, and 18th-century 3-light casements to the first floor with slender pine frames and leaded panes of thin glass. A further window survives at the rear. A door with an 18th-century oak bead-moulded frame has been inserted through a former lateral hall stack, which still projects slightly from the wall. The eaves rise from left to right above the door. The roof is half-hipped to the left. Inside the left cottage, original features are blocked or boxed in, and the former passage doors have been blocked with windows. The right cottage’s rooms contain late 16th- to early 17th-century chamfered crossbeams with stop-chamfered spine beams with run-out stops; the former inner room includes a section of reset late 17th-century oak panelling. The roof appears to have been rebuilt in the 18th century.