Valley Cottage

SLAPTON BROOK STREET SX8245 SLAPTON Valley Cottage 11/84 II

Small house. Early C17 or earlier with C20 extensions. Painted stone rubble. Thatched roof with gabled ends, and slate wall plate exposed at rear. Internal stone rubble stack at left end with tapered top with slate weathering, heightened in brick with yellow clay louvred pot. Plan: A one-room plan cottage with a small room partitioned off later at the right end with a staircase in the rear right hand corner. At the high left end there is a gable end stack with fireplaces on both floors and a large stair turret on the front left end corner, the stair removed and the turret converted into an outhouse. The lower right hand end wall has been rebuilt and it seems that the house extended originally a little further to the right, so it might have had a full 2-room plan. The roof timbers are blackened but this might have been caused by pitch used as a preservative and not smoke-blackening from an open hearth fire. In the late C20 a single storey outshut was built on the front and at the time of the survey 1988 an extension was being built at the rear. Exterior: One storey and attic. Asymmetrical 2-window front. On the left corner the thatched roof is carried down over a large square projecting stair turret with a later doorway on its right side. On the ground floor a central C20 glazed door and a late C18 or early C19 2-light casement with glazing bars and slate sill now inside a late C20 outshut porch which has a thatched lean-to roof. To the right of the porch a small C20 2-light casement under eyebrowed eaves. The right hand gable end has a small C20 casement. The higher left end is blind and has the bowed outer wall of the stair turret to the right, partly corbelled out at the top and with a very small blocked window. At the rear a single storey concrete block extension with a thatched roof was being built at the time of survey 1988. Interior: 3 cambered chamfered ceiling cross-beams and one half beam in right hand end wall, one with indeterminate stops. Ground floor fireplace has been partly blocked. Chamber fireplace above has dressed stone jambs and chamfered timber lintel with hollow step stops. C19 staircase in rear right hand corner with simple railed balustrade. Roof: 3 trusses with straight principals, halved cambered collars, threaded purlins and diagonal ridge-piece probably trenched. Some of the common rafters are also intact and all the timbers are blackened. (See above)

Listing NGR: SX8204145044