Langstone Cottage

Langstone Cottage is a small house dating to around 1500. It was altered in the 17th century and again in the 18th and 19th centuries. The house is built of rendered granite rubble with quoins, and has a granite rubble gable end chimney and a thatched roof with gable ends. Originally it comprised three rooms, although the location of the original passage is unclear, and it was likely initially divided by low partitions. Solid stone walls were later inserted between the inner room/hall and hall/lower room; the wall between the hall and inner room only extends up to eaves level. An inserted fireplace is situated at the lower gable end, with no evidence of other stacks. The house was probably originally open to the roof, but was ceiled in the 17th century, and subsequently altered in the 18th and 19th centuries, changing the ground plan. There are two windows on the first floor and three on the ground floor. The windows are 20th-century casements in small openings with timber lintels. A 20th-century plank door is located in the former hall, to the left of the centre. An original doorway, now blocked, was likely positioned to the right of it. A 20th-century window has been inserted into the rear of the lower room. An upper gable end window reuses an original door frame, now incorporating what is thought to be an early 18th-century 2-light window with iron casements and leaded panes. Internally, a single beam survives in each ground floor room. The original inner room has a roughly chamfered wany beam. The hall contains a large cross beam, also roughly chamfered with run-out stops. The lower room has a beam with chamfer and straight cut stops. The fireplace in the lower room features a wooden lintel, apparently chamfered, but now blocked. A wooden newel staircase is situated between the fireplace and the rear wall. One original smoke-blackened roof truss remains at the upper end, retaining its original threaded purlins, threaded ridge, rafters and battens and a small section of smoke-blackened thatch. A triangular strengthening block is at the apex below the ridge. The roof at the lower end was replaced in the late 18th or early 19th century and consists of two trusses with lapped and pegged collars. The inserted chimney is clean, but two smoke-blackened rafters survive at this end.