Judley'S Cottage

Judley’s Cottage is a house dating back to the late 15th or early 16th century, with alterations from the 17th century and a later 17th-century addition. The walls are a mix of rendered cob and rubble, and the roof is thatched, half-hipped to the left and hipped to the right. Two brick axial stacks vent the building.

Originally, the house comprised three rooms and a through-passage, with a higher-status end to the right, which likely originally contained an open hall with a central hearth. In the 17th century, the hall was floored over and an axial stack was inserted, backing onto the passage. The inner room remained unheated until the late 17th century, when a wing was added to the rear, with an axial stack providing heating for both rooms. The house was significantly modernised internally and re-fenestrated in the mid-20th century. A lower section of the house, to the left of the original passage, was demolished at an unknown point.

The front of the house, which has three windows, was refaced with leaded-light casements in the mid-20th century. The first floor has two-light windows, while the ground floor features a four-light window on the left, which is a canted bay. The thatch is raised in eyebrows over the first-floor windows. The original, pointed, four-centred, chamfered wooden doorway is recessed within a rustic, thatched, open-fronted porch; it now has a 20th-century arched plank and glazed door. A wide wing projects from the rear of the right-hand end of the house.

Inside, substantial chamfered longitudinal beams are visible in the hall and inner room. A room behind the inner room has a fireplace with a high chamfered wooden lintel. The hall fireplace also has a high cambered chamfered wooden lintel resting on a corbel and granite jamb to the right. Roof timbers of two original pairs of side-pegged jointed crucks survive, although varnish obscures any traces of smoke-blackening. Both cruck roofs have morticed cranked collars and threaded purlins, but differ in the construction of their apexes: one has a triangular strengthening block, while the other has a curved saddle into which the top of the cruck blades are morticed and upon which the ridge rests.