Homestead Cottage The Homestead

Homestead Cottage, located on Bickington Road in Fremington, is a 17th-century tenement farmhouse that has been divided into two separate homes. It features some earlier fabric that is hidden from view and was remodeled and extended on the left end in the early 19th century. The building is constructed of rendered stone and cob, with a roof that is partially tiled and partially covered in asbestos slate. There is a rendered front lateral hall stack and an axial brick stack on the right side.

The original 17th-century layout includes a hall and an inner room, with a rear kitchen wing that forms an L-shape. There is also a single-storey outbuilding from the 17th century on the right side of the axial stack, which has now been incorporated into the dwelling. The early 19th-century remodeling introduced Gothick style details and added a tall, nearly rectangular two-storey single bay extension with a cellar at the higher left end, which is set back slightly from the main range. The main range is two storeys high, while the former outbuilding is a single storey with an attic, and the 19th-century addition is two storeys with a cellar.

The front facade features a three-window range of 19th-century two-light casements, each with eight panes per light, and gabled dormers above three similar windows that have Gothick pointed arch glazing bars in the top panes. The left-hand window was inserted in what was once a cross-passage doorway. The 19th-century extension has single hornless 12-paned sashes on each floor. At the base of its gable wall, there is a reset inverted timber lintel dated 1704, which is flanked by a carved initialled heart.

Inside, the 17th-century roof structure remains largely intact over the earlier range, featuring heavy principals for two trusses over the hall and inner room, and a lighter single truss over the former outbuilding, which originally had trenched purlins and lap-jointed collars. Some early joinery, including an integral cupboard, survives in the hall, which also has 17th-century ceiling beams. The hall/cross-passage partition was likely removed in the 19th century. The principal rooms in the 19th-century extension have a molded plaster cornice, and there is a pair of Gothick doors, three panels high, leading to the rear kitchen wing, which were salvaged from the nearby Belmont Lodge that was demolished in the 1970s.