Magpie Cottage And Wisteria Cottage

Magpie Cottage and Wisteria Cottage are a pair of cottages with origins in the late medieval period, likely remodelled in the 17th century. The construction is whitewashed rendered stone with a thatched roof, gabled at the ends. The roof has a chimney stack on the left end, an axial stack, and a projecting stack on the right end, all with brick shafts.

The original form was a late medieval open hall house. While the precise extent of the hall is unclear, a thick wall and hip cruck at the left end suggests that the medieval house may have been two rooms wide, extending from the left (higher end) to the right, though smoke blackened thatch is said to extend the full length of the two higher end rooms. The house was probably floored in the 17th century, with the hall stack backing onto a cross passage. Wisteria Cottage was later divided off as a separate dwelling. Floor levels are uneven; the ground floor of Magpie Cottage is raised above ground level, with a cellar below the cross passage. A rear lean-to addition exists on Magpie Cottage.

The front elevation is asymmetrical with a five-window arrangement. The eaves are eyebrowed over the three left-hand windows. A flight of stone steps leads to a 20th-century front door to the cross passage of Magpie Cottage; a front door to the left of Wisteria Cottage is also present. Windows are timber casements with small panes, mostly of 19th or early 20th-century date, though the first-floor windows of Magpie Cottage are 20th-century timber casements with glazing bars. Two ground floor windows on the left have shutters, and a 20th-century addition is present on the rear of Wisteria Cottage.

During inspection of Magpie Cottage, the ashlar stone back of the hall stack was visible in the passage, featuring a stone cornice – a typical feature of medieval houses in the Teign Valley. The hall fireplace has granite jambs and a chamfered step-stopped lintel, and chamfered crossbeams. The left-hand room contains a chamfered axial beam and a staircase against the rear wall. Surviving hip crucks are present at the left end of the house and against the crosswall between the rooms, along with a plastered-over jointed cruck. The re-thatching revealed smoke-blackened thatch, a sooted rafter, and an undamaged smoke hole, demonstrating the building's history as a smoke-filled dwelling. This is a traditional, historically significant house of medieval origins.