Staple Cottage

Staple Cottage

A cottage dating from the early 16th century, reduced and remodelled in the 17th century, probably divided into two cottages in the 19th century and reunited in the 20th century. The building is constructed of local limestone rubble with the north-east end clad in slate hanging. The roof is of grouted scantle slate with gabled ends and early crested ridge tiles; the rear slope has large graded slates. Rendered chimney stacks project slightly from each gable end, with tapered tops and slate weathering.

The cottage originated as a 4¼-bay open hall house, originally longer and probably divided by low screens. It is likely the house originally continued to the left, suggested by the very narrow left-hand roof bay which may be only part of a full bay. The building may also have extended further to the right. In the 17th century it was reduced in size and floors inserted to form a two-storey, two-room-plan cottage with approximately equal-sized rooms, each heated from gable end stacks. The left-hand room served as the kitchen, with an oven to the left of the stack. The central entrance doorway gives direct entry into the left-hand room, though it may formerly have given access to a cross-passage leading to central newel stairs at the back, now rising from the left-hand room behind the partition between the two rooms. If there were originally a cross-passage, the partition on the left side was probably removed in the 19th century when the house seems to have been divided into two cottages. The right-hand cottage had a doorway inserted immediately to the right of centre, giving direct entry into the right-hand room. In the 20th century the right-hand doorway was blocked and the cottages reunited into one house. A curious feature of the plan is the splayed front left-hand corner, which corresponds with the splayed corner of the adjacent cottage 'Peters', built in the 17th century probably when the left end of this house was demolished. The two splayed corners provide a passageway between the two buildings.

The exterior is two storeys with a nearly symmetrical three-window front range. The first floor has three small windows: the centre and left windows are 18th-century two-light casements with leaded panes and shaped latch plates, while the right-hand window is a 19th-century two-light casement inserted into the old frame. The ground floor windows at right and left are in enlarged openings with segmental brick arches and later 19th or early 20th-century four-pane sashes. The doorway to the left of centre has a 20th-century glazed door and a late 19th or early 20th-century scantle slated canopy on large wooden braces. The doorway to the right of centre is blocked. At the centre of the back, a rectangular projecting stair turret rises over which the main roof is carried down; the stair turret has a rectangular single light window. To the right of the stair turret is a 20th-century shallow horizontal window.

The gable end fireplace in the left-hand room has a brick arch in place of a lintel and a corbelled stone oven on the left-hand side. The left-hand room has a massive square-section cross-beam; the joists on one side have been replaced and on the other side are hidden by a plaster ceiling. The partition on the right side of the former passage is plastered over but the very large square section head-beam is exposed. The large chamfered cross-beam in the right-hand room is unstopped unless the steps are buried in the wall plaster or have been hacked off; the joists are concealed. The fireplace in the gable end of the right-hand room has a renewed lintel. Newel stairs rise from the left-hand room behind the partition between the two rooms; the stone steps have been replaced by wooden steps. On the first floor the left-hand room has a partly blocked fireplace in the gable end.

All four roof trusses are entirely smoke-blackened. Only the second from the right has curved feet; the others are straight and seem to rest on the wall plate unless they are jointed to short wall posts which are concealed. The trusses have mortice apexes and mortices for the collars, which have been replaced with later dovetail lap-jointed collars. There are four tiers of mortices for threaded purlins very closely spaced, but only some of the purlins survive. The diagonal ridge-piece is also threaded. The rafters have been replaced. The truss second from the left is closed by a later plastered stud partition.