Armada Cottage Beggars Roost

Armada Cottage, located at Beggars Roost, is a farmhouse that has been converted into three cottages. It likely dates from the early 16th century and was remodeled and extended in the 17th century, with some alterations made in the 20th century. The building features painted rendered cob and stone, with a thatched roof that is half-hipped at the left end. There is a tall rendered rubble stack with a pronounced batter, drip, and tapered cap, as well as an axial stone rubble stack (formerly an end stack) to the right, accompanied by a brick stack at the right end.

Originally, the layout was probably a three-room and through-passage design, which has since been altered to a cross-passage plan. The lower end, which was once a barn or shippon, has been converted into part of the dwelling. The inner room may have been rebuilt and extended in the late 16th or early 17th century to create two rooms. A two-storey cottage was added at the right end in the late 17th century, featuring a short right-angled projection to the front with a gabled slate roof, resulting in an overall off-centre T-shaped plan.

The building has two storeys and a six-and-a-half-window range, with 20th-century fenestration consisting of two-light casements with six panes per light and eyebrow dormers. The hall window has been built out in line with the stack. The cross-passage doorway is framed by a moulded timber surround with a cranked head, and there is a thatched porch at the centre cottage. The right-hand end cottage has a chamfered door surround with an old two-plank door.

Inside, the principal ground floor rooms feature stop-chamfered beams, except at the shippon end. The right end cottage includes a scroll-stopped chamfered door surround at the head of the old stairs, which still has its original treads. A similar door surround is found at a doorway that may have originally been at the head of the stairs beside the axial stack. The end cottage has a 17th-century truss with straight heavy principals. The main roof truss has been removed to Beggars Roost, and there are two raised cruck trusses over the hall and cross-passage, with the lower end of the cross-passage forming a solid cob partition at the apex of the roof. Access to the roof space over the shippon end is limited, but exposed roof timbers over the hall suggest that smoke-blackening may extend over the hall and possibly the inner room.