Church Cottage

Church Cottage is a late 17th or early 18th century two-bay timber-framed cottage with brick facing and a tile roof. It has been modified in the late 18th or early 19th century, extended in the 1930s, and again between 2007 and 2008.

The cottage is constructed of timber-frame with brick facing, flint and brick extensions at either end, and a tile roof. The front elevation shows late 18th or early 19th century brick facing on the central original part, with cambered ground floor door and window arches. The front door is offset to the right and appears to be 19th century; the windows are six-pane casements on the ground floor and four-pane on the first floor, both 20th century replacements. The rear was modified in 2009 and features a full-length glazed door and new brickwork around replacement windows. This rear wall extends beyond the original timber-framed rear.

At the north-east end, the roof is hipped and continues as a catslide roof incorporating three roof lights over the flint and brick outshot, with a dormer window at the rear. The south-west end has a lower, half-hipped roof over the 2009 extension. Both chimneys have been rebuilt. The former was an end stack to the original cottage; the latter is a 17th century central stack that originally stood between the two principal rooms.

Internally, the cottage retains its original two-bay lobby entrance plan. The original entrance has been blocked and replaced with the offset front entrance. Framing to the front wall is mostly absent, having been removed during brick refacing, except for a small section of mid rail in the left room, the posts forming the front entrance to the lobby, and the first-floor wall plate. The timber-frame of the rear wall is virtually intact, including mid rail and wall plate. Ground-floor studding here is absent, though first-floor studding with cross braces is complete. The large frame studding of the left end wall is intact, topped by a queen-post roof truss. The right end wall appears finished in brick. Doorway frames to the two rooms off the lobby are present.

The left-hand room contains a deeply chamfered spine beam and a cross beam at the dividing wall between the two ground-floor rooms. Most joists in both original ground-floor rooms are early. The late 17th or early 18th century inglenook fireplace in the left-hand room has been rebuilt using early bricks and incorporating a new bressumer. On the opposite side of the fire breast, in the right-hand room, the fireplace has been blocked, but there is a modified late 18th or early 19th century fireplace on the opposite wall in this room. Newly built stairs are located at the rear of the chimney stack, built into the rear frame adjacent to an original jowl post.

The roof is of queen-post construction with studding below forming the partition wall between the two original first-floor rooms. The tie beams are original, as are the clasped purlins. Most rafters appear original, and there is a wind brace in the upper left-hand room.

The flint and brick outshot on the north-east end and the brick extension on the south-west end are finished with modern fittings and fixtures. Alterations and additions from 2007 onwards are not of special interest.

The cottage is shown on the 1841 tithe map as L-shaped, with its main north-east to south-west orientation but with a short extension to the north-west. This extension had been removed by the 1909 Ordnance Survey map. An outshot shown on the tithe map extending from the south-west end to Church Lane had also gone by that date, indicating the cottage was modified around the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. Despite its name, the cottage has no known connection with the 13th century St Andrew's Church, Grade II* listed, which lies approximately 50 metres to the north-west.