Buttercup Cottage

SX 6493 - 6593 8/246

SOUTH TAWTON SOUTH ZEAL

Buttercup Cottage

GII House.Early C16 with major later C16 and C17 improvements,part was divided off in the early C20,modernised circa 1970.Plastered walls,probably granite stone rubble,maybe with cob;disused granite stacks;thatch roof.Plan and development:two-room plan cottage with wide through passage facing south-west and set back from the street.Originally it was a three-room-and-through-passage plan house but,in the early C20,the right end room (the former service end room)was divided off and rebuilt as a separate cottage.Thus the passage is the former through passage,the room to right of it the former hall with its large axial stack backing onto the passage,and the small inner room has a late C19-early C20 axial stack backing onto the hall.Originally this was an open hall house,open to the roof from end to end,divided by low partitions and heated by an open hearth fire.The first improvement was probably the flooring over of the inner room but there is no evidence of this apparent.Hall fireplace is a mid or late C16 insertion and hall was floored in the early or mid C17.House is two storeys with secondary service outshots to rear.Exterior:irregular three-window front of C20 casements with glazing bars.The passage front doorway contains wide C20 double doors.Roof runs along the building between the adjoining houses.Interior:hall has a granite ashlar fireplace with an oak lintel,the soffit of which has been cut back.It contains a C19 oven.The axial beam is soffit-chamfered with step stops.No early carpentry detail shows in the inner room. Original roof over hall and inner room is carried on some type of cruck trusses(the lower sections are plastered over).Cambered collars are set unusually high.The whole of this roof structure including purlins,common rafters and the underside of the original rye thatch is smoke-blackened from the open hearth fire.Buttercup Cottage was formerly called Golden Pitts and according to the Devon SMR stands in the vicinity of an early cemetery.South Zeal is special being one of the few medieval boroughs in Devon where a significant number of its C16 and C17 houses still survive.

Listing NGR: SX6515793554