29 Westgate

Cottage, late C18 or early C19 with an earlier core and a mid-late C20 rear extension. MATERIALS: coursed stone with a pantile roof and a red brick chimney stack. PLAN: L-shaped with a central entrance.

EXTERIOR: the cottage is set back from Westgate on its north side. The main (south) elevation has two bays and two storeys beneath a pitched roof, with a ridge chimney stack. It has a central entrance fitted with a four-panel door, glazed to the upper panels, and flanked to either side by a three-light window with a stone lintel; there are identical windows, with timber lintels to the first floor, and all windows have projecting sills. The rear (north) elevation has a single, inserted ground floor window and a projecting mid C20 two-storey rear range, all with C20 uPVC window frames.

INTERIOR: an historic ground floor plan-form is retained with a central staircase flanked to either side by a full-depth room. The eastern room has a large inglenook (with a small fireplace inserted) to the west wall: this retains a substantial bressumer beam (which would have originally carried a chimney hood), a heck partition (a screen to the fireplace) and a stop-chamfered heck post. The recess to the right of the heck indicates the presence of a passage that may have originally continued through the party wall. The eastern room also retains a pair of substantial chamfered and waney spine beams running from west to east, supporting stop-chamfered common rafters; the most easterly spine beam is scarf-jointed at its south end. The western room also retains a pair of spine beams in the same positions and alignment as those to the eastern room. The lower part of the roof structure is visible within the coved ceilings of the first floor; it is formed of at least two triangular trusses of a different character to the carpentry of the ground floor, and is considered to be later in date.