Rectory Cottage

Rectory Cottage is a house dating to circa the mid-17th century, likely a remodelling of an earlier structure, with extensions from the 19th century and alterations in the 20th century. It is built of painted stone rubble, with a section of the front partly refaced in brick. The roof is thatched with gabled ends, and has clay pantiles on the additions. Gable-end stacks have rebuilt brick shafts.

The original layout consisted of two rooms and a through-passage, with a kitchen on the southwest side and a parlour on the northeast side. Both rooms were heated by fireplaces in gable-end stacks, and a service room is located in a rear wing, which is unheated. Evidence suggests the house may be a 17th-century remodelling of a Medieval house, including the reuse of a smoke-blackened timber as a purlin and the unusually long plan for a 17th-century dwelling. The original through-passage doorways have been blocked, and the wide passage is now a small room. A small addition at the northeast end was largely rebuilt in the 20th century, and the front wall has been partly reconstructed in brick. A circa 19th-century cartshed sits on the southwest gable end.

The southeast front is asymmetrical, with four windows. The left-hand side has been rebuilt in brick, with late 19th-century casement windows with glazing bars. The centre and right sides have 20th-century metal casements. A doorway is located to the left of centre, with a partly glazed door. The right end has a recessed section with a pantile roof and a single window. At the rear (northwest side), a broad wing has a thatched half-hipped roof, and an eaves area on the left contains a 17th-century chamfered timber three-light window with an old casement and leaded panes. The cartshed on the southwest gable end has a lean-to pantile roof and an open front.

Inside, the ground floor rooms feature deeply chamfered cross-beams with step-stops. The kitchen has a large fireplace with a replaced bressumer and a later oven. The parlour has a fireplace with chamfered monolithic jambs with broach stops and a cambered timber bressumer, where the chamfer fades into the jambs. The roof structure consists of four bays with collar trusses, halved and lapped dovetail joints to the principals, two tiers of trenched purlins, a diagonal ridgepiece, intact common-rafters and battens, and one reused smoke-blackened purlin. The rear wing also appears to retain its original roof structure.

The cottage represents a largely complete 17th-century two-room plan house, likely remodelled from a Medieval house.