The Court

The Court is a cottage, with an adjoining linhay and garden wall, likely dating from the 18th century. The cottage is built of colourwashed rendered cob with a thatched roof, hipped at the ends of the main range, and has end stacks with brick shafts. A thatched linhay with a half-hipped roof is attached to the left end of the cottage, and a rear garden wall, which stands adjacent to the road, runs along the right side.

The cottage is single depth, three rooms wide, with heated rooms on either side of an unheated central section, subdivided between a front stair and small service rooms at the rear. A second stair is located against the rear wall of the left-hand room, which is larger than the right-hand room, which functions as a small shop. The rear wall shows signs of rebuilding. The cottage has two storeys and an asymmetrical two-window front, with the eaves of the thatch projecting over the first-floor windows. There are two entrances to the front; one, left of centre, is a wide 19th-century plank door providing direct access to the left-hand room, and the second, on the extreme right, has a corrugated iron porch canopy carried on posts, leading into the shop. There are 2-light 19th-century casement windows with 4- and 6-panes per light, except for the ground-floor window on the right, which is a 4-pane fixed window. The rear elevation has two first-floor 18th-century casements with square leaded panes.

Inside, exposed cross beams are visible in the centre and right-hand rooms, with a boxed-in cross beam in the left-hand room. Some old plank partition walls remain on the ground floor. The principal rafters are straight, and the roof construction is probably of the 18th century. Very little alteration has been made to the interior in the 20th century. The 3-bay linhay has a rear wall of concrete block and a loft. Loft joists are mortised into vertical posts, which have been partly covered with weatherboarding. The colourwashed rendered cob garden wall, adjoining the rear right corner of the cottage and capped with slate, is also original. The Court is considered a particularly attractive and unspoiled example of a cob and thatch cottage, complete with a thatched linhay and garden wall.