New Church House Cottage

New Church House Cottage

A small house that has undergone significant changes in use and structure over nearly four centuries. The building comprises an early to mid-17th-century main range with a mid-17th-century rear wing, together with 18th-century and 20th-century extensions. It was originally constructed as a two-room house, converted into three separate one-room cottages in the late 18th century, then reunited into a single dwelling in the 20th century, with the rear wing recently reverting to separate accommodation.

The house is built of local limestone rubble under a steeply pitched slate roof with gabled ends. The chimney stacks are particularly distinctive. There is a large projecting stack at the loft gable end with slate weatherings, another at the right gable end with set-off and a rebuilt red brick shaft, and a third projecting stone stack at the gable end of the rear wing with set-off and slate cap.

The original plan consisted of two rooms, each with a gable end fireplace. The left-hand stack contained a smoking chamber and possibly an oven, making this the kitchen, while the right-hand room served as the parlour. Around the mid-17th century, a kitchen wing was added to the rear of the parlour. This rear wing has a single-room plan with a gable-end fireplace and oven. In the late 18th century, the house was subdivided into three one-room cottages. The two cottages in the original front range shared a central entrance lobby at the front, probably located within the original entrance partition. The rear wing cottage was entered from the side, with a service room added beside it in the angle between the rear wing and main range. A long single-storey outbuilding was constructed at the left end, likely at the same period.

The exterior presents two storeys with a two-window range. Ground-floor windows are 20th-century three-light casements with glazing bars. First-floor windows are later aluminium casements. A central porch with stone rubble side walls and a lean-to slate roof stands at the front, originally open-fronted but now glazed. Inside the porch, niches in the side walls are probably blocked windows. Behind the porch is a pair of 19th-century plank doors set at splayed angles, forming a lobby. The left wing is a low single-storey structure with scantle slate roof, aluminium windows, and a 20th-century door. The rear wing has a large external stack on its gable end, with various 20th-century casements and a plank door on the side, also with a glazed porch. A narrow gable-ended 20th-century extension stands parallel to the rear wing in the angle with the main range.

Internally, the original house retains a plank and muntin partition between the two ground-storey rooms, exposed on the left side with chamfered mortices showing worn stops at low level. A plastered partition on the first floor aligns with a roof truss. The ground-floor rooms contain chamfered cross-beams; the right-hand room has straight-cut stops and a half-beam on the right end wall, while the left end has a timber lintel with narrow chamfers and run-out stops, set on stone rubble jambs. The right-end fireplace has been blocked with a small 20th-century fireplace with blocked oven, fitted with a chamfered timber lintel with straight-cut stops and stone rubble jambs; the fireplace above has a chamfered timber lintel on wooden corbels.

The roof structure of the original building appears largely to have survived, though the roof space is not fully accessible. The short curved feet of five principal rafters are visible in the first-floor rooms of the original house, and the purlins appear to be threaded. In the first-floor room of the rear wing, the feet of the principal rafters are just discernible.