Little Thatch

Little Thatch is a house dating from the early 16th century, which was remodeled in the late 17th century and extended in the late 20th century. It is constructed of whitewashed stone rubble and cob, topped with a thatched roof featuring half hipped and hipped ends. There is a rendered stone rubble stack at the right end with slate weathering, and a 20th-century brick stack at the left end.

The building has a two-room plan, which likely originally included a through passage between the two rooms. The larger room on the lower right is heated by a gable end stack, while the smaller room on the left is unheated. It is believed that the house was originally open to the roof and heated by an open hearth fire, as evidenced by smoke-blackened timber found in the current roof. A floor was later inserted, and the stack at the lower end was built in the late 17th century. In the late 20th century, a two-storey kitchen wing was added to the back of the left end, along with a garage and a room above it at the lower right end.

The exterior is asymmetrical and has two storeys, featuring a north front with two to three windows. The windows are a mix of 19th and 20th-century two and three-light casements with glazing bars, while the first-floor windows sit at eaves level and have eyebrows in the thatch. The ground floor left window is a 19th-century 30-pane horizontally sliding sash. The garage doors are part of the late 20th-century extension on the right end. The rear elevation includes a two-storey 20th-century wing to the right, which is rendered and has a hipped thatched roof with eyebrow eaves.

Inside, most of the joists are made of later softwood, but the right-hand room features one roughly fashioned beam. The fireplace at the lower right end has a chamfered calipered timber lintel with run-out stops. The partition on the left side and most of the partition on the right side of the former passage has been removed. Much of the roof structure was replaced in the late 17th or early 18th century, with trusses having collars lapped and pegged to the faces of straight principals. One truss over the lower right end includes reused earlier principals that are smoke-blackened, and one principal has a mortice for a collar, although the apex of the truss is missing.