Molland Botreaux Post Office Sunnymead Cottage

This is an early 17th-century house, originally built as three rooms, with a later 17th or early 18th-century addition, a minor late 18th-century addition, and some late 20th-century alterations. It is now used as two cottages, including a post office. The ground floor is built of coursed stone rubble, while the first floor is of rendered cob with completely rendered end walls. The roof is covered in Welsh slate, gable-ended to the right and hipped to the left, originally thatched. The house has squared and coursed stone rubble stacks with weatherings and caps, one cement rendered.

The original plan consisted of a larger principal room (likely a former kitchen) to the right with a rear lateral stack and opposed entrances in the front and back walls of the left-hand end of the right-hand room. A former parlour was situated to the left, featuring an axial stack on the right-hand end, and a small unheated inner room between the two, with a passage in front. A winder staircase is located in the rear corner of the right-hand room. A one-room plan addition, likely from the late 17th century, was added to the right, distinguishable by a straight joint on the front. An external end stack and a former gable-end entrance were part of this addition, possibly added when the house was divided into three cottages, with a further entrance added to the left-hand room. A late 19th or 20th-century lean-to addition is present at the right-hand gable end of the cottage.

The front has an asymmetrical appearance, with late 19th-century 2- and 3-light wooden casements. A small late 20th-century one-light casement has been inserted between the first and second first-floor windows from the left. There are 19th-century boarded doors located between the first and second, and second and third windows from the left, each with a 20th-century lean-to concrete porch. A boarded door leads to a lean-to outshut on the right, with a late 20th-century gabled concrete-block porch.

Inside the early 17th-century part of the right-hand ground-floor room, there’s a cased spine beam and half beams, alongside a later lateral dividing wall. The old winder staircase in the rear corner includes a cupboard with a boarded door featuring H-L hinges. The left-hand room has chamfered cross beams and beams along the walls with scroll stops, and a blocked fireplace with a chamfered wooden lintel. The central unheated room also displays chamfered cross beams. The roof is of 17th-century construction, incorporating four trusses with mortice and tenoned apices, a diagonally-set ridge-piece, and a single purlin on each side. The ground-floor room of the cottage adjoining to the right has a roughly chamfered spine beam, an open fireplace with a plain wooden lintel, and old boarded side, back, and cupboard doors, the last two with H-L hinges. The cottage portion also has 17th-century A-frame roof trusses.