Chapple Cottage

Chapple Cottage is a house dating to the second half of the 15th century with two phases of 16th-century alterations. It stands as a notable medieval building with a complex evolutionary history and particularly important roof structure.

The house is constructed with rendered cob walls, with a thatch roof hipped to the left end and gabled to the right. A rubble chimney stack projects from the right gable-end, featuring a brick shaft and a rendered rubble front lateral stack.

The original plan appears to have been a 2 or 3-room-and-through-passage arrangement. There is a very narrow lower room to the left. The hall originally featured a central hearth and was open to the roof, as was the lower end. The inner room presents a puzzle in the building's development: its original roof does not survive, and a thick wall with a step separates it from the hall. It may be a later addition, or alternatively contemporary with the hall but either floored from the outset or floored early in the 16th century. An early 16th-century doorframe on the first floor leading into the chamber above the inner room must predate the flooring of the hall. If this frame is not reused, it suggests a ladder may have originally led up to it from the open hall below.

The hall underwent two phases of modernisation. A front lateral stack was inserted into the open hall around the mid-16th century, and the final flooring of the hall and lower end was completed by the late 16th century. In the 20th century, the passage was blocked at the rear to form a bathroom.

The exterior presents an asymmetrical 4-window front of two storeys. The windows are 20th-century 1 and 2-light small-paned casements with top opening lights. A wide 20th-century plank door to the passage is positioned towards the left-hand end, with the lateral stack to its right and a curved oven projection adjoining it. A small squint window sits in the left-hand angle of the chimney stack projection.

The interior is surprisingly complete. At the rear of the passage is a small wooden unchamfered doorframe with a square-headed pegged frame, crude enough to suggest early date and likely reused from elsewhere in the house. Between the passage and hall is a plank and muntin screen with chamfered unstopped muntins, possibly an original low partition or a 16th-century insertion. The lateral fireplace to the hall features a very high hollow chamfered wooden lintel. An axial chamfered ceiling beam with pyramid stops runs above, with narrow-chamfered joists beneath. The inner room contains crude, very broad, flat and closely spaced joists with a very early appearance. Leading into the chamber above is an unchamfered wooden pegged doorframe with a shouldered head, unlikely to be later than the mid-16th century.

The roof structure is remarkably complete over the lower end and hall, smoke-blackened throughout. It comprises two pairs of full crucks with a square-set ridge clasped between the tops of the principals and resting on a small yoke. A cranked morticed collar, chamfered on the soffit, connects the crucks. Just over the lower side of the present passage are the remains of what appears to be a smoke louvre. It consists on each side of the roof of a wooden board held against the rafters by a timber extending up from the purlin below and pegged onto the board. Visible in the underside of each board is what appears to be a vertical strut which originally extended outside to form the vent, with mortices on each board at the other end for a similar strut. In the wall at the higher end of the roof, dividing the hall from the inner room, is a smoke-blackened post supporting the ridge.

This notable medieval house preserves interesting features from each phase of its development and contains a particularly complete and important roof structure.