Brook Cottage

Brook Cottage

Brook Cottage is a house dating to the late 18th or early 19th century, formerly comprising two separate cottages. The building was converted into a single property around 1961 by the poet Charles Tomlinson.

The structure is built of stone with lime render and is topped with a Cotswold stone-tile hipped roof fitted with brick axial and gable-end stacks, together with shorter rendered stacks serving the end bays. Windows are timber-framed with metal casements featuring leaded lights.

The house is rectangular in plan with smaller bays at each end, clearly reflecting its origins as two cottages. Two winder staircases remain positioned against the rear wall. The end bays serve ancillary purposes—kitchen and utility areas—whilst the two halves of the building, divided by a party wall that remains in situ, are subdivided variously. The building is orientated north-west to south-east with its principal elevation facing south-west.

The exterior presents two storeys with attics and spans five bays, supplemented by additional single-storey end bays. Two open-fronted porches with stone-tile hipped gable roofs are placed symmetrically on the principal elevation, each fitted with timber plank doors with wrought-iron fittings. Ground-floor windows flank each porch, with further windows above on the first floor; the porch to the north has an additional upper window. All windows contain two casements with cut-out timber decorations of four semi-circular arches at their heads. The single-storey end bays each feature a timber plank door and an adjacent two-casement window. The rear elevation is blind except for a small ground-floor window; the end elevations are also blank. Historic rainwater goods survive, including bracketed square-section lead gutters and conical cast-iron hoppers. Two decorative hoppers with scalloped decoration appear at eaves level on the front elevation.

The interior features two entrances on the south-west side leading into the present sitting room and dining room. The utility room to the north of the sitting room has a stone-flag floor continuing into the sitting room. The sitting room contains a single roughly-chamfered ceiling beam, fitted cupboards on the west side, and fireplaces at both north and south ends; the southern fireplace has a decoratively carved and plain painted timber surround with floriated columns and frieze. A door to one side of the southern fireplace opens to a winder staircase, whilst a door on the other side leads to a short corridor connecting to the dining room. The dining room has a further single ceiling beam without chamfering and a fireplace at the south end featuring bare decoratively carved timber with a cast-iron surround, tiled cheeks, and a heavy timber lintel. Doors from this fireplace similarly access a winder staircase (with a cupboard below) and the kitchen. The kitchen is finished with a quarry-tile floor.

The first floor is reached via steps to a planked door opening onto the timber winder staircases positioned in the eastern corners of the dining room and sitting room. Three bedrooms occupy the first floor, the largest being to the north and containing a blocked fireplace on its north wall. Between the north bedroom and the second bedroom stands a narrow room with a close-studded infilled timber partition on its north wall. The bedrooms feature chamfered ceiling beams and elm planked floorboards, some exceeding 30 centimetres in width. The attics, accessed by continuation of the southern winder stair, contain large principal rafters and purlins of early fabric, though some common rafters have been replaced.

All internal and cupboard doors are timber ledge and plank with hand-made wrought-iron fittings including thumb-latches and strap hinges. Opening casement windows feature wrought-iron catches. Remaining joinery—architraves, skirtings and the like—is timber with simple mouldings.