Building record WYV 032 - Yew Tree Cottage, Mill Road

Yew Tree Cottage is a remarkable grade II-listed clay-lump building which has no known parallel elsewhere and is of considerable historic interest. It contains a narrow central structure of two storeys with a thatched roof flanked by single-storied, pantiled wings and forms the shape of a cross with a symmetrical arrangement of windows and doors. The initials ‘WCS’ appear above one of its two first-floor windows and the date ‘1831’ above the other. This date is consistent with the fabric but its various architectural features, which include pedimented window hoods, refer to the 18th century and were evidently designed to appear archaic and picturesque. Some confusion surrounds the origin of the building, which lies at a considerable distance from the nearest road and was reached only by a footpath in the 19th century. It was built by Lieutenant William Charles Steggall, gentleman, of Wyverstone Cottage (now ‘Knight’s Court’) on the opposite side of Mill Road, and was probably intended as a memorial to his father, the Revd. Charles Steggall, who occupied the old Rectory which lay on or near the site until shortly after his death in 1819.

The structure consists of rendered clay lump with walls of 9 inches in thickness, and forms the shape of a cross as shown in the accompanying ground plans. The two storied central section has canted corners and lies beneath a thatched roof, while the two single-storied wings which project to south and north are pantiled. Its doors and windows possess unusual pedimented hoods and were probably arranged with perfect symmetry about its central axis when the cottage was first built in 1831. The eastern and western gables contain identical doors, both of which are now blocked, with re-used stone finials set into the render above each. The western stone depicts an heraldic jousting helm surmounted by a lion rampant and the eastern a grotesque face, badly mutilated, which may have formed a corbel block (S1).