Bolberry Cottage, The Cottage And Sunnyholme

BOLBERRY COTTAGE, THE COTTAGE AND SUNNYHOLME

Three adjoining cottages originally forming a single tenement, dating from the 16th century, though accurate dating is obscured by the replacement of the roof structure in the early 20th century. The buildings are constructed of painted rendered stone rubble and cob, with a slate roof featuring gable ends.

The original plan conforms to a classic three-room and through-passage layout, with the lower end to the left. The hall has since been demolished, but the range retains two front lateral chimney stacks at the lower end (the one to the left having been replaced with a small brick stack in the 20th century) and a rear lateral stack to the upper end with a tapered cap and drip. The inner room was divided into two rooms in the 18th century, creating the partition wall between The Cottage and Sunnyholme. The hall side of the screens passage forms the partition between Bolberry Cottage and The Cottage.

Bolberry Cottage incorporates the lower end and through-passage of the original tenement. It retains plank and muntin screens on each side of the through-passage, with centrally positioned four-centred arched doorways with chamfered surrounds, now blocked on both sides with a new doorway formed adjacent to the blocked opening on the lower side. The end bay of the lower screen is wide enough for a doorway, with an unchamfered headrail over this section and a comparatively unworn sill. The muntins are chamfered on the lower end side only. A staircase was inserted at the rear right side of the passage in the 20th century, and a 20th-century extension was added at the rear. The original fireplace lintel is probably concealed behind a 20th-century chimneypiece. An elaborate staircase was inserted in the 20th century but incorporates 19th-century turned newels and balusters.

The Cottage incorporates the hall and part of the inner room, with direct entry into the latter. The hall features a single cross beam with a wide hollow chamfer and a bressumer at the upper end supported centrally on a chamfered timber post with scroll-stops at the base of the chamfers, the head mortice indicating it is integral with the bressumer. A partially exposed wide timber lintel survives to the hall fireplace. The interior retains 19th-century ledged two-plank doors to the staircase and stair cupboard, and 19th-century dado panelling to the hall and inner room. An early 19th-century staircase to the rear left-hand corner of the hall provides access to a late 18th or early 19th-century gable-ended outbuilding at right angles to the rear of the range, the loft of which has now been taken in to form part of the dwelling. The cobbled floor of the attached rear outbuilding survives.

Sunnyholme at the right end incorporates the upper end of the inner room, forming a small one-room cottage with a staircase in the rear right-hand corner and a 20th-century outshut at the rear. The fireplace to Sunnyholme is shared with The Cottage via the rear lateral stack and features a thin chamfered fireplace lintel with diagonal cut stops and a rounded back.

The fireplaces to The Cottage and Sunnyholme sharing the rear lateral stack have rounded backs; that to The Cottage has a shouldered head.

The exterior features two storeys and a five-window range in total. Bolberry Cottage has a 17th-century three-light mullion window and a 19th-century three-light casement, both with three panes per light, above a four-paned sash to the left of a 20th-century door, and a narrow single-light two-paned window. The Cottage has a four-paned sash and a two-light casement with three panes per light above a 17th-century three-light ovolo mullion window with three panes per light to the left, and a small canted bay window with a two-light casement and two panes per light to the right of a door with a three-panelled base and two glazed upper panels. Sunnyholme has a three-light casement with three panes per light on each floor to the right of a 19th-century plank door.

There are unresolved questions regarding the relationship of the tenement with the adjoining Malthouse, which suggests the house may originally have extended further to the right, though a brick gable end wall inserted on the Bolberry Cottage side obscures the evidence. A heavily concealed smoke-blackened truss to the right gable end of the Malthouse supports this possibility.

The roof structure was entirely replaced circa 1907, but an apparently smoke-blackened stub of the ridge purlin survives on the inner room side of the solid cob partition wall between the hall and inner room. The fact that the bressumer at the upper end of the hall is awkwardly supported on a chamfered and scroll-stopped timber post suggests the range was originally open to the roof, with floors and stacks being later insertions.

The division of the inner room to form the small cottage appears to have occurred in the 18th century. The original single fireplace was converted to two adjacent ones across the angles of the partition and rear wall. Bolberry Cottage was divided off at a later date, probably in the 19th century.

The interiors of all three cottages, including the upper storeys, have remained comparatively unspoilt since the late 19th century.