Beam Cottage

Beam Cottage is likely a row of houses, later subdivided into a row of cottages and now a single dwelling. It dates from around the late 16th or early 17th century. The building is constructed of painted granite rubble with raised eaves of cob. It has a steeply pitched roof covered in Belgium clay tiles, with gabled ends. The axial ridge and gable end chimney stacks are rendered with thatch weatherings. It appears that the right-hand portion follows a two-room plan, with each room originally heated by an end stack and potentially containing a central passage, now occupied by later stairs. Adjacent to the left is another two-room plan house; the left-hand room was probably unheated, while the right-hand room has a stack backing onto the left end of the other house. There is evidence suggesting a further house originally extended to the right-hand end, as indicated by fireplaces on the exposed right-hand gable.

The building is two storeys high, with a long, asymmetrical five-window front. The front features various early 20th-century wooden casement windows and late 20th-century plastic casements, all with wooden lintels. A particularly large chamfered lintel is positioned above the central ground floor window, and a 20th-century plank door and gabled porch are located beneath the end of this lintel. Various smaller 19th and 20th-century casements are present at the rear, also with timber lintels. The ground level at the rear is significantly lower, likely due to later excavation.

Internally, a chamfered cross beam is visible in each of the right-hand and centre rooms, featuring hollow bar stops. All fireplaces have chamfered wooden lintels with matching hollow bar stops – one on the left side and one on each floor of the axial stack, and another on the first floor of the end stack on the exposed right-hand gable end. Other fireplaces are blocked, as is the ground floor fireplace on the exposed right-hand gable end. The room at the left-hand end was originally divided by a very heavy post and panel screen, with a square section sole-plate and rail; this screen was removed and found in the garden during a 1985 survey. The doorway between the two two-room plan houses is a relatively recent addition, exhibiting roughly hewn collars halved and pegged to the face of principals, these being trenched for missing purlins. The roof over the left end is entirely 20th-century. Row-like early two-room plan houses are uncommon.