Tally Cottage

Tally Cottage is one of two attached cottages in North Cerney, possibly originally a single house. It dates to the mid-17th century with some 19th-century alterations, and comprises two storeys and an attic.

The building is constructed from limestone rubble with dressed stone quoins, window surrounds and stacks. The roof is covered in Cotswold stone slates. It follows a long rectangular plan oriented approximately east-west.

The main garden elevation to the south has five 17th-century stone mullioned windows and three 20th-century windows, with two doorways: one towards the west with a 20th-century glazed door in a flat-chamfered surround beneath a gabled canopy on brackets, and one at the east end with a similar glazed door set under a timber lintel. A single gabled dormer with stone slates sits roughly in the centre of the range. The east end has the current main entrance door and two 19th-century windows. The roadside front to the north features a casement window in a 19th-century segmental-headed opening and another set under a timber lintel, both on the ground floor, with a matching dormer. Two axial stacks with capping and skirtings stand at the west end and at the west end of the central bay.

The ground floor contains two rooms, probably originally three. Heavy ceiling beams with deep chamfers and stops run throughout the range. The central section retains a complete 17th-century ceiling with original chamfered and stopped joists between the beams. Both rooms have large fireplaces: the eastern room has an inglenook with a very flat Tudor arch to its chamfered bressumer; the western room has a smaller fireplace with a curved bressumer. Each room contains a spice cupboard built into the northern wall with plain square doors, probably dating from the 18th century—one has strap hinges, the other butterfly hinges. The stair to the first floor is 19th or 20th century and situated at the north-eastern corner, probably not in its original position. Some first-floor rooms retain original wide floor boards. Parts of the roof structure date from the 19th century.

Tally Cottage appears to have originated in the mid-17th century alongside the attached house at No.43 Woodmancote; the two may originally have been a single dwelling. By the late 19th century, Ordnance Survey maps show that No.43 had been separated from Tally Cottage, and Tally Cottage itself had been divided into two cottages, with an additional narrow bay at the east end. By the late 20th century, this bay had been removed and the two earlier cottages on the Tally Cottage site had been reconverted to a single house, while No.43 remained entirely separate. A refurbishment occurred during the 19th century, probably coinciding with its conversion to a single dwelling, involving the creation of a new window opening to the road elevation and the replacement of at least part of the roof structure.