Pond Cottage

Pond Cottage

Pond Cottage is a two-storey, double-fronted cottage of red and vitrified brick with a slate roof and timber windows. The building is one room deep with a continuous cat-slide roof across the rear, extending over a single-storey kitchen and former store. It is arranged with a central entrance lobby from which a stair rises between the two principal rooms, each heated by end chimney stacks. The kitchen to the rear contains a third tall stack and adjoins a bathroom. Upstairs are two bedrooms positioned over the principal rooms, with two further rooms situated beneath the cat-slide roof at the rear.

The front elevation is symmetrical, featuring a central six-panel door with a rectangular fanlight, flanked by six-over-six pane sliding sash windows with exposed frames. The door panels have been altered. The ground-floor windows are unweighted, lacking cords and pulleys, and have shallow segmental brick arches formed of headers. The brickwork is laid in Flemish bond with a regular pattern of red stretchers and vitrified headers.

The sides and rear elevations are laid in Sussex bond where red and vitrified bricks are used without a discernible pattern. Ground and first-floor rooms beneath the cat-slide are lit by a small number of irregularly sized and positioned side-hung casement windows. The kitchen window is a later timber casement. The kitchen has an opening with a timber lintel for a small range and copper, both drawing into the tall kitchen chimney stack. To the south is a mid- to late twentieth-century timber lean-to and open-sided store. At the rear is a plank door set within a later timber porch. Detached from the cottage is a brick-built privy dating from around 1900 and a later store, both with clay tile roofs.

The interior stair is an enclosed straight flight with a single wooden handrail. The fireplaces in the right-hand principal room and two bedrooms above are typical nineteenth-century cast iron examples, while that in the left-hand principal room is of early twentieth-century date. All retain simple timber surrounds and mantel shelves. Built-in cupboards adjoin the chimney breasts throughout. Interior doors are generally unmoulded four-panel examples, with plank doors serving the kitchen. A historic plank and batten door between the left-hand principal room and the lean-to store has been recently inserted, as evidenced by mechanically cut bricks around the opening.

The kitchen and bathroom areas are floored in red quarry tiles. In the bathroom, adjacent to the kitchen, are several large ceiling hooks, possibly dating from a phase when the cottage served as a game keeper's cottage.

Throughout the principal rooms and bedrooms, a consistent moulding appears on window and door architraves, around full-height built-in cupboards, and around fireplaces. Doors are hung on an assortment of butt, strap, and HL hinges. HL hinges are a type typically found from the late seventeenth into the early nineteenth century, in which the flanges are fixed to the outer faces of the door and door frame, while the flange attached to the door is formed in an L shape for additional strength and rigidity, the overall shape resembling the letters H and L combined. An assortment of nineteenth-century handles, latches, and locks is present, some likely original and others dating from the late nineteenth century. These fixtures, along with some other details, may reflect a phase of refitting when the cottage became part of the Boldre Grange estate.