Church House

Church House is a house, originally a church house, dating back to the early 16th century. It was improved in the late 16th and early 17th centuries, later converted into three cottages in the 18th or 19th century, and reunited into a single house with modernisation around 1980. The house is constructed from coursed granite ashlar on a chamfered plinth, with granite rubble to the rear. It features a granite stack with an ashlar chimney shaft and a thatched roof.

The building faces east, bordering the churchyard and lych gate. A 1980 renovation cleared the ground floor of internal partitions, aiming to recreate the appearance of the 17th-century layout. However, opposing doorways remain slightly right of the centre. Originally, the house was open to the roof, but a floor was inserted and a stack built in the north end wall during the late 16th and early 17th centuries. A contemporary staircase was placed alongside the rear fireplace, and an unused staircase branches off the main one, suggesting the existence of a rear block. The current main staircase is a 20th-century addition. At the rear, an external stone staircase leads to a first-floor doorway.

The exterior has an irregular arrangement of windows, with three casements on the ground floor and two on the first. The central ground-floor window is a timber mullion window from the 19th century with leaded glass. Most of the windows are 20th-century replacements, except for the ground-floor left window, which sits within an original granite ashlar embrasure with chamfered reveals. The original front doorway is a two-centred arch with a chamfered surround, currently containing a 19th-century stable-type door. The roof is gable-ended to the right and hipped to the left. The left end wall has two 16th-17th century windows on the first floor; the front window has square-headed lights, while the rear window has pointed heads and sunken spandrels.

Inside, the late 16th/early 17th century ceiling consists of four bays supported by large, soffit-chamfered crossbeams with straight-cut stops – although it is thought some of these may have been altered. The joists are also soffit-chamfered, and mostly original, except for those in the south end bay, which have been replaced. The fireplace is unusually wide, spanning nearly the full width of the building. The hollow-chamfered granite ashlar lintel is a single piece, now supported due to a crack. To the left of the fireplace is a round-headed granite doorway leading to the stone stairs. The original roof structure remains intact with cruck trusses, cambered collars, and sets of chamfered purlins. The entire roof structure, including the hip construction, rafters, and original rye thatch, is heavily blackened from a 16th-century open hearth fire.

Church House is considered an attractive building within the village and a well-preserved example of a late medieval church house.