Building record HSK 129 - Bridge Cottage

Bridge Cottage is a timber-framed and rendered house of special historic interest that was probably designed as a farmhouse but had been divided into a pair of labourers’ cottages by 1838. The building contains a number of rare features including an unrecorded plank-and-muntin cross-passage screen, original windows with diamond and ovolo-moulded mullions, three good early-17th century fireplaces, and evidence of an original external door that opened directly into its parlour. The central section of the screen was restored in the 20th century but it remains an impressive example. The interior reflects the standard three-cell domestic layout, with a central hall flanked by a pair of service rooms to the left (north) and a high-end chimney with a parlour to the south, while the exterior retains its original profile with traditional half-hipped gables at both ends. All three elements date from slightly different periods, and the building represents an important illustration of the rapid improvement in English housing during the 16th and early-17th centuries. The northern service bay survives from a lower 15th or early-16th century house that probably contained an open hall, while the hall is a taller late-16th century replacement and the parlour a matching early-17th century structure that replaced its predecessor in order to accommodate a larger chimney. The present chimney appears to have been rebuilt again soon afterwards to heat the parlour chamber as well as the ground floor rooms. Apart from the loss of its thatch and the raising of its service bay walls as recently as
1978 the house has since remained relatively little altered, and fully warrants its grade II listing (S1).