Sedgewell Cottage

Sedgewell Cottage

Sedgewell Cottage is a cottage of 15th or 16th century origin, substantially altered during the 17th, 18th, 19th centuries and later. It has an associated detached garden outbuilding of early 19th century date or earlier.

The cottage is constructed of local rubblestone, some dressed, and cob, with floor and roof structures of elm including doors, floorboards, and a plank and muntin screen. Some floors are stone flagged. The exterior walls are limewashed and the roofs are thatched in water reed with a wheat straw ridge.

The building is oriented north-east to south-west on a site that slopes upwards to the south-west. The plan reflects an altered medieval arrangement: it is of four unequal bays at ground floor level, single depth, with a central hall and upper and lower end rooms. The location of any former cross passage is uncertain. The lower (north) end comprises an elongated bay, possibly occupying the footprint of a former shippon. The upper end is separated from the hall by a plank and muntin screen and is further subdivided by an historic stud partition on the south side to create a narrow room with a modern staircase to the first floor. The first-floor rooms show a modern arrangement at varying floor heights with exposed roof structure above.

The exterior elevations are of uneven stone with cob above wall plate level, limewashed, with scattered small window openings to both floors. The central bay to the left of a 20th century projecting thatched porch is broken forward and incorporates a stair turret with a wind eye. Beneath the eaves above the porch are at least four nesting holes. Towards the north end of the façade are traces of a former door opening, now infilled as a small window. At the far left, the south end of the façade has a central door with a window to its left. The window to the right may be a former door and has a two-light window to the eaves above.

To the rear, there is a variety of openings. The ground floor left window is early with a plain timber mullion. Most, but not all, other windows have late 20th century frames in the same style. The bays to the right of the rear elevation have been largely enclosed within 20th century single-storey additions (not included in this listing). The south gable end incorporates a projecting chimney, probably with a former bread oven, and has a brick stack with offset.

The roof is steeply hipped and gabled to the south to incorporate the end stack. Two ridge heights traverse the building in alignment with the topography, with an axial stack. To the rear is a single eyebrow dormer.

Internally, the principal entrance, right of centre, leads to a lobby with 17th or 18th century doors to the hall and lower end either side of an axial chimney breast with back-to-back fireplaces. The lower end is a long three-bay room with three chamfered crossbeams with scrolled nick stops. Most joists are replacements with simple chamfers. The fireplace has a replaced bressumer and coarse rubble jambs. To the right, a step rises into the central hall through a plank door. The east wall behind this door bears traces of a former doorway.

The central hall has an altered fireplace at its north end and a plank and muntin screen at the south end. The screen sits on a raised cill height, indicating that the hall floor level has been dropped. There are two chamfered cross beams with stepped run-out stops and joists with similar mouldings. The stair turret in the north-east corner contains a newel staircase that was enclosed from the hall in the late 20th or early 21st century when a substantial stop-chamfered post was fitted beneath one of the crossbeams. An historic doorway to the modern rear kitchen extension has an infilled lintel above. The base of a roof truss is exposed in the right jamb of this doorway. To the left is a wide window with timber mullion and lintel constructed from reused roof timbers.

Two steps rise from the hall through the screen doorway with an altered head to a narrow room containing a modern inserted lateral staircase with a 17th century stair window. The ceiling below the stair has trimmers from an earlier staircase. The south face of the plank and muntin screen has been altered to remove mouldings, with traces of a former paint scheme visible. A trimmer rests on projecting pegs at the top of the screen and beneath the joists to the head beam. A modest 18th century fireplace occupies the corner of the east wall. The north wall is an historic stud partition with a trimmer carrying the plain pit-sawn joists and a doorway to the southern bay. The south room, possibly the medieval parlour, contains a large 17th century lateral beam with bar and run-out stop and scratch-moulded joists. In the south-west corner is a large fireplace with a former bread oven and coarse rubble jambs with possible hacked-back corbels of a former smoke bay.

At first-floor level, the feet of slender roof trusses are exposed in the south rooms. In the rooms above the central hall, heavily-sooted jointed cruck trusses are exposed, with some sections of purlins and rafters to the west roof slope. Some trusses were formerly closed; the truncated remains of braces remain in their mortices. The outer face of the southern truss shows no blackening, indicating the southern bay was enclosed from the hall to apex level. Two empty purlin mortices show that the medieval roof extended across the current south end of the building. Above, the remaining cruck trusses are pegged into a diagonally-set ridge piece with smoke-blackened straw between heavily-sooted laths. The ridge height has been raised in a post-medieval roof structure around the remains of the early roof.

The north end, beyond the stone stack to the hall, is at lower level and has five collared trusses with purlins, some bearing visible masons' assembly marks. Some bays have exposed ladder purlins between the trusses. The room to the south of the hall chimneybreast has five collared trusses with purlins.

The garden outbuilding to the rear is roughly square on plan, constructed of rubble sandstone with machine-sawn roof principals beneath thatched water reed. It has two door openings to the principal (east) elevation.

The 20th century single-storey extensions to the rear of Sedgewell Cottage and the detached 20th century garage to the north are not of special interest and are excluded from the listing.