Church House And Dove Cote

Church House and Dove Cote, Bickington

A pair of houses, formerly a single building, with Church House on the left believed to be a pre-Reformation church house. Church House dates to the 16th century, with the Dove Cote added in the late 16th or early 17th century. Both have solid roughcast walls of stone or cob beneath asbestos-slated roofs. Each gable features a projecting chimney-stack; the left-hand stack has a rebuilt shaft probably of brick under rendering, while the right-hand stack is of stone rubble with a wide, deep projection and offset. Built into the right-hand side of the latter stack, just above the offset, are three pigeon holes believed from oral tradition to have been added in the mid-19th century.

A further projecting chimney-stack with offsets stands off-centre to the right in the front wall of Church House, its thick shaft covered with hard 20th-century render. Church House follows a two-room and through-passage plan, with the former hall (featuring a lateral fireplace) probably on the right. It must originally have been freestanding, as evidenced by two blocked upper-storey windows in the right-hand gable wall. The Dove Cote has a single-room plan, currently entered through the right-hand gable, with a blocked doorway in the solid full-height wall dividing the two houses. A single-storey 19th-century lean-to stands behind Church House.

The front elevation presents two storeys across five windows. The two right-hand windows belong to the Dove Cote. Windows at Church House are all 19th-century wood casements with glazing bars, except for a 20th-century window at the left-hand end of the ground storey. The Dove Cote has 20th-century plastic windows. The Church House doorway to the left of the stack has a stone porch with slated pent roof covered with cement, which appears to extend over an oven projection on the right-hand side. The door is of old planks with a small window cut into it. An early stringcourse appears at sill level in the upper storey, extending from the left corner of the building to the projecting stack, except where worn away.

The interior of Church House contains a stud-and-panel screen to the left of the through-passage, with studs and head-beam featuring three quartered-round mouldings. The doorway has a curved head similarly moulded, which appear to have been shouldered originally. The studs on the reverse side are plain, but one end of this side carries a wall painting probably of early or mid-18th-century date, consisting of a blank panel with a broad frame of C-scrolls. The gable wall houses a fireplace with a chamfered wood lintel.

The former hall to the right of the passage is entered through an old plank door with wrought-iron strap-hinges. Its fireplace has chamfered stone jambs with stone corbels at the top carrying a chamfered wood lintel with step-stops; the right-hand corbel, though apparently original, is not chamfered. An oven on the right side has brick openings. The central upper floor beam and two half-beams are cambered and chamfered with bar-stops. The front window to the left of the fireplace retains some old plank doors. An old wattle and daub partition crosses the middle of the hall. The roof structure comprises six side-pegged, jointed-cruck trusses, including two gable-trusses, with cranked collars and threaded purlins but no ridge-piece. The timbers are not smoke-blackened. The house retains much old wall-plaster.

The ground storey room of the Dove Cote has a central upper floor beam and two half-beams, all cambered and chamfered with step-stops, plus plain joists. A large gable fireplace has a chamfered wood lintel, partly concealed by the upper floor beam. On the left-hand side, a hollowed chamfer with its own flue has been cut in, possibly representing a smoking chamber. On the right-hand side at the back, a large flue has been inserted; its purpose is uncertain, as there is no obvious opening to it from below. The thick masonry to the left contains a large recess halfway up, fitted with a ventilator pipe in its rear wall. An exposed roof truss in the upper storey has a short cruck foot at the front.

The two houses were church property until 1924. A photograph exists in the National Monuments Record, described as Bickington Post Office.