Cleave Cottage Pink Cottage the Post Office

A row of three cottages located in Widecombe-in-the-Moor, comprising Cleave Cottage and the Post Office (to the left) and Pink Cottage. Cleave Cottage and the Post Office are likely from the early 19th century, and were built onto Pink Cottage, which probably represents a fragment of a 16th or 17th century house. A 20th-century addition exists at the rear of Pink Cottage. The cottages are constructed of granite rubble, with roughcast rendering at Cleave Cottage and painted rendering at Pink Cottage. A section of the south-west gable wall of the Post Office is also roughcast. Cleave Cottage and the Post Office have asbestos-slated roofs. They feature large granite chimney stacks with thatched weatherings on the left-hand gable and on the ridge, positioned off-centre to the right. Pink Cottage’s roof is thatched, with a half-hip to the right, and has a large granite chimney stack on the ridge, near the left-hand end. The cottages have single-depth plans. They are two storeys high. Cleave Cottage and the Post Office are three windows wide, with ground-storey windows featuring plain granite lintels. Several windows have been altered, but the left-hand ground and second-storey windows of both cottages, and the right-hand ground storey window of Cleave Cottage and the Post Office retain 19th-century casement windows with glazing bars. The doorways are paired, now with 20th-century doors and a common 20th-century wood porch with a corrugated iron pent roof. Pink Cottage has a small, old window to the left of the ground storey, and a larger window with a wooden lintel in the centre. This central window has been partially blocked and now contains a 20th-century metal casement. An old plank door, which opens in two halves, is situated to the right, with a 20th-century wood porch. Pink Cottage also has one second-storey window with a 2-light 19th-century window containing three panes per light. The interiors were only partly inspected. The ground-storey room of the Post Office (the shop) has an upper floor of plain joists running front to back. The ground-storey room of Pink Cottage contains a large fireplace with granite jambs and a moulded wood lintel, which the owner states was recovered from a burnt-out public house at Fenny Bridges in East Devon. Although the walls are stripped, there is no ventilation slit to suggest it was the shippon end of a longhouse. The roof of Pink Cottage has 20th-century timbers.