Sunset Cottage

Sunset Cottage is a house, likely built in the mid 16th century and remodeled in the 17th century. It features a combination of rendered stone and cob, topped with an asbestos slate roof that has gable ends. The building has a large front lateral stack with a tapered cap, offsets, and a bread oven projection. Its unusual plan includes a hall heated by the lateral stack at the right end, which was formerly open to the roof, and has a direct entry to a smaller room on the left. A single cell range at the left end was demolished around 1970.

The cottage is two storeys high with an irregular arrangement of 20th-century windows that include diamond leaded lights. There is a two-light casement window above a cased 16th-century doorway to the left of the stack, and a three-light window above a two-light casement to the right. At the rear, a two-storey outshut features a reset 17th-century door surround with scroll-stopped chamfers, one of the jambs replaced, and a plank door with cover strips.

Inside, the hall has a moulded plasterwork cornice, which is partly preserved in the chamber above. There is an integral bench seat in the window aligned with the stack, and a chamfered fireplace lintel. A low chamfered beam at the lower end of the hall indicates a former jettied construction, which is confirmed by the largely intact roof structure beneath the later 20th-century roof. The roof includes two raised cruck trusses with threaded purlins, a ridge purlin, and morticed and tenoned collars. The truss over the center of the hall is heavily smoke-blackened, as are the purlins, rafters, and surviving battens. The second truss over the jetty is closed to the apex with a cob and lime plaster partition, which is smoke blackened on the hall side only, while the roof timbers over the smaller room remain clean. This house is an interesting example of a building from a transitional period, being partially floored from the outset, with the hall itself not being ceiled until the early to mid 17th century.