Kent Cottage

Kent Cottage is a small house dating to the late 18th century, with elements from an earlier building and minor 20th-century alterations. It is constructed of rubble stone, with a painted render coat to the front elevation, and has gable chimneys and a slate roof.

The house has a continuous rear offshut plan, where the rear section accommodates the staircase and ground-floor service rooms.

The front elevation is near-symmetrical, with two storeys and two bays. A later gabled open porch now encloses the central doorway, which has a four-panel door with pointed heads to the upper panels. There are stacked six over six pane sash windows on either side of the doorway, set within painted dressed stone surrounds. The rear elevation is partially enclosed by a late 20th-century greenhouse, but retains a two-light mullioned window in the ground floor kitchen and a two over two pane sash window to the stair landing.

The interior has two ground floor rooms, each with late 18th-century hearth surrounds; the left-hand living room includes a moulded mantle shelf and a later 19th-century brick oven. The parlour has a smaller hearth with a moulded surround. Both rooms retain wide late 18th-century three-panel doors. A spice cupboard has been re-sited within the wall between the kitchen and living room. The staircase within the rear offshut has stone steps, slender turned balusters, and a moulded ramped handrail. The flanking walls incorporate windows for borrowed light. The upper floor bedrooms have plank doors and small contemporary hearths.

Kent Cottage is a well-preserved example of a continuous rear offshut plan house, a characteristic Cumbrian vernacular plan type from approximately 1730 to 1830; it retains much original historic fabric and contemporary fixtures and fittings. It has group value with the adjacent listed building, 'Midtown'.