Cobley Cottage

Cobley Cottage is a small house dating from the early to mid-17th century, and possibly earlier, with significant alterations in the 19th and 20th centuries. The walls are plastered cob on stone rubble footings; the stacks are built of stone rubble and cob, topped with 19th-century brick; and the roof is thatched. The house originally had a four-room plan, with a central entrance hall containing stairs that lead to the rear. To the left of the entrance hall is a room with an axial stack backing onto a small, unheated room at the west end. To the right of the entrance hall are two smaller rooms, the furthest one heated by a cob end stack. The house's layout is unusual for the 17th century, and further investigation may aid in understanding its development. It is two storeys high. The front has an irregular three-window arrangement of 20th-century casements with glazing bars. The central front doorway is slightly offset to the right due to a room projecting behind an adjacent property; it has a contemporary thatched porch and a 20th-century door. The roof is hipped at each end. Inside, the room to the right of the entrance hall has a 20th-century rolled steel joist (RSJ) replacing the original crossbeam. A partition between this room and the end room is an oak plank-and-muntin screen, but only the plain rear of the screen is visible in the end room, precluding precise dating. The end stack is rubble with a soffit-moulded oak lintel. The room to the left of the entrance lobby is the largest and has a soffit-moulded crossbeam with run-out stops; the fireplace has been partly rebuilt in the 20th century. The roof structure contains early to mid-17th-century A-frame trusses with pegged lap-jointed collars and dovetail-shaped halvings. Cobley Cottage forms part of a group of listed buildings within the village centre.