Craig Cottage

Craig Cottage is a house dating from the early to mid 17th century, with alterations and an extension added in the late 20th century. It is constructed of painted stone rubble, with a slate roof that is hipped at the right-hand end and gabled at the left, abutting Highclere. The roof features red clay ridge tiles, with a painted stone rubble end containing a lowered clay pot. A rear lateral stack has been removed.

The original layout consisted of two rooms and a through passage. The room at the right-hand end, heated by a gable-end stack, likely served as a hall or kitchen. The slightly larger room to the left was probably a parlour, featuring a lateral fireplace at the rear and a rear stair turret between the fireplace and the passage’s back doorway. The property was said to have been divided into cottages before the late 20th-century alterations, which included removing the right-hand partition of the passage and creating a small entrance lobby at the front. The rear lateral fireplace of the left-hand room was converted into a doorway for a two-story wing.

The front of the house presents an asymmetrical three-window facade. Most windows are 3-light casements from the 19th century with glazing bars, except for a small 1-light ground-floor window to the left and an early to mid-17th-century 4-light casement to the left of center, also with glazing bars. Inside the 4-light window frame, the right side has a cyma and fillet moulded wooden doorframe, while the left jamb has been replaced. The circa late 18th or 19th-century plank door is fitted with earlier wrought iron hinges. A late 20th-century glazed door is located to the left of the front. The right-hand end wall has two small 19th-century casements under the eaves and a 20th-century 3-light casement with glazing bars on the ground floor. The projecting stair turret at the rear is now incorporated into a late 20th-century rear wing.

Inside, the fireplace at the right-hand end has a large, slightly cranked timber lintel with a cyma and fillet moulding and rear straps, partially embedded in later stone rubble jambs. The rear lateral fireplace of the left-hand room is now a doorway but the dressed slate jambs remain. A newel staircase with a wooden newel cap and a wooden lintel over the doorway, featuring scratch moulding, is located to the right of the former fireplace. The roof is a 5-bay structure with straight principals, roughly chamfered cranked collars notch lap-jointed to the principals, threaded purlins, and mortise and tenoned apexes with diagonal trenches for a missing ridgepiece. Additional features include roughly chamfered ceiling beams, a fielded panel partition on the first floor, and stop-chamfered spine beams with run-out stops.