Nos. 16 and 17, THE VILLAGE

Nos. 16 and 17, The Village, are a pair of cottages originally built as a single house, dating back to the 16th century and significantly altered in the 20th century. The construction is of stone rubble walls, with a gable ended roof covered in asbestos slate, and displaying three gables facing the front. Two stone rubble gable end stacks are present.

The original layout of the house has been much changed by its conversion into two separate cottages, creating some confusion due to an early internal doorway in the right-hand gable end of No. 16, suggesting the original house continued further along that line. It is likely it originally comprised three rooms with a through passage. Each cottage now has one main room, each heated by a gable end stack.

The front elevation has an asymmetrical arrangement of three windows, predominantly featuring 20th-century metal frame casements with glazing bars, the majority being two-light, with a three-light window on the ground floor to the left. A 19th-century three-light wooden casement with H-L hinges and timber lintel is located on the ground floor to the right. First-floor windows are set within gables created during a virtual refronting of the building circa the mid-20th century. Adjoining plank doors, the right-hand one for No. 16 and the left for No. 17, are situated beneath a slate pentice. The rear of the building displays similar gables; the central gable covers a stair projection with a single granite-framed light. A similar window is found on the first floor of the left gable end, with a roundheaded window situated below.

Inside No. 16, the main room features three substantial cross beams, with a half beam above the fireplace, which is chamfered and decorated with bar and hollow step stops. The fireplace has been rebuilt, and to its right is a likely 16th-century chamfered wooden round-arched doorway, now blocked. Within the entrance lobby is a section of reused 17th-century plank and muntin screen, with beaded edges to the muntins and head-beam. The curved feet of two substantial roof trusses are visible on the first floor embedded in the walls, although access to the roof space was not possible during the survey.