Town Farm Cottage

Town Farm Cottage is a cottage, originally a farmhouse, dating to around the late 15th century. It has undergone modifications in the 16th and 17th centuries, with extensions likely added in the later 17th and 19th centuries. The construction is of rendered rubble walls, with a projecting lateral stack at the front featuring a dripcourse. A 20th-century brick axial stack is set back from the ridge. The roof is gabled and thatched.

The original layout was three rooms with a through-passage, featuring a central hearth and hall, and a lower end open to the roof. The inner room was either open and subsequently ceiled before the hall, or always ceiled. In the early 16th century, a floor was inserted over the lower room and passage, projecting partly into the hall on an internal jetty. The remainder of the hall was likely not ceiled until the late 17th century. A lower end extension, probably from the late 17th century, now forms part of number 2 Main Street. 19th-century outshuts were added to the rear of the hall and lower room. A photograph indicates the inner room was demolished in the late 19th century.

The front facade is asymmetrical, featuring a 4-window arrangement of 20th-century 2 and 3-light casements with glazing bars. A 20th-century blockwood door sits to the right of the projecting stack, sheltered by a wood shingle porch.

Inside, several original features have been preserved. The original smoke-blackened roof structure survives from the lower room to the inner end of the hall, featuring two pairs of face-pegged jointed crucks, one with a remaining projecting peg with chamfered edges. Other features include morticed cambered collars, threaded purlins, a square-set ridge with a yoke, a closed truss with smoke-blackened plaster, a short curved hip post, smoke-blackened common rafters, and thatch (with a bottom layer of what appears to be furze). The hall has an internal jetty over the lower end partition, comprised of joists with curved, chamfered, and stopped ends, suggesting a concealed plank and muntin screen beneath. Late 17th-century hall cross beams are closely spaced with a scratch moulding. A blocked lateral fireplace retains a heavy timber lintel. A wood newel staircase at the rear of the hall, potentially inserted when rooms above the lower end were created, leads to them. It features a round-headed timber doorway. The lower room includes 19th-century panelled shutters and cupboard doors. The building is notable for its well-preserved early roof structure and the sequence of features illustrating the evolution of the medieval house.