Church Cottage

SS 62 SW SATTERLEIGH AND WARKLEIGH WARKLEIGH 3/204 Church Cottage

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• II Former church house, now private dwelling. Late Cl6/early Cl7. Rendered stone rubble, rear unrendered. Slate roof with gable ends. Brick stack at left gable end and rear lateral stone rubble stack with brick shaft, offsets and bread oven projection. Plan: Single room deep, 4 rooms in line, with direct entry into each of the larger heated rooms at erach end, and staircase to rear of the right-hand of the 2 narrower middle rooms. Development: Subsequent C19 and C20 alterations have heavily obscured the original plan, but the head beams of 2 plank and muntin screens, if in situ, suggest a wide former cross-passage towards the left, upper end with a probable parlour to left and larger hall to right heated by the rear lateral stack. The headbeams are unrelated to present partition, the screens presumably removed in the C18 or C19 when the house appears to have been divided into 2 occupations, the parlour being increased and the hall reduced in length to create 2 small middle rooms, each no wider than a passage, which presumably served as sculleries to each of the cottages. The staircase serving the left-hand cottage has been removed, the present staircase which breaks into 2 flights at the rear of the right-hand middle room, having been refashioned in mid C20. 2 storeys. 4-window range. All 2-light casements 6 panes per light except for C20 ground floor window to right of C20 gabled conservatory porch with plank inner door. C20 door giving direct entry into left-hand room. C20 lean-to at right end. Interior: Parlour has single chamfered cross ceiling beam, hall has 2 similar beams, all with keel stops. fireplace to lateral hall stack concealed. Headrails to 2 plank and muntin screens, chamfered on the outer arrises only to parlour and left-hand middle room, that to parlour supported at the rear end on a jowled bracket or possibly concealed post. Otherwise C19 joinery principally intact. Roof: 4 heavy trusses with straight principals, 2 tiers of butt purlins, and formerly morticed and tenoned collars. No evidence of smoke-blackening. Church Cottage backs onto Warkleigh Churchyard and has been, in turn, a church house, parish poor houses (until 1837) farm cottages and, as now, a private dwelling. P W Copeland 'Devonshire Church Houses', Part VIII p 268.

Listing NGR: SS6421522782