Melhuish Down Cottage

Melhuish Down Cottage is a small house dating from the late 17th century or earlier. It is constructed of whitewashed rendered cob on stone rubble footings and features a thatched roof with gabled ends. The cottage has a left end stack and a front lateral projecting stack that includes a rectangular bread oven.

The current layout consists of two rooms and a cross passage, with a rear outshut extending the full length of the house under a catslide roof. The original plan may have included two rooms and a passage, with a hall or kitchen on the right and a lower end room on the left; however, the left side of the house has been rebuilt. There are indications of a former external rear stair turret, suggesting that the outshut is a later addition. A straight stair has been added in the passage, which may have been widened for this purpose.

The cottage is two storeys high and has an asymmetrical front with two windows. The large stack with the bread oven is positioned to the right of centre, and there is a large 20th-century glazed thatched porch leading to the passage on the left. A second door to the right of the stack provides direct access to the hall. The windows are two-light casements, with two panes per light.

Inside, several 17th-century features remain. The hall fireplace has been largely rebuilt, but the hall retains two chamfered cross beams with bar and step stops, exposed joists, and a plank and muntin oak screen with chamfered muntins and step stops. The apex of the roof space is ceiled, although an early roof structure may still exist. This house has an unusually small hall for its period, yet it shares features commonly found in larger contemporaneous houses. The continuously thatched outshut is an attractive aspect of a building that backs directly onto Goldcross Hill.