Description

TQ 55 41 SPELDHURST SPELDHURST HILL (north side),
SPELDHURST
12/582 Old Post Office Cottage

II*
GV

Small house. Circa 1720-30 with minimal later modernisations. Timber-framed
on coursed sandstone footings; the front is weatherboarded, the rest is hung
with peg-tile. Brick stacks on stone bases and brick chimneyshafts. Peg-tile
roof.

Plan: Small 2-room plan house facing south west onto the churchyard of the
Church of St Mary (q.v.). Central front doorway to entrance hall containing
the main staircase. Rooms either side have diagonal corner fireplaces to rear
against the entrance hall. The flues join above first floor level to a single
central rear chimneyshaft. Services to rear in integral outshot at a lower
level than the front ground floor. Kitchen/bakehouse stack in rear wall of
the outshot.

Main block is 2 storeys with attics in the roofspace, cellar below and
integral outshot to rear. Secondary lean-to outshot on right end.

Exterior: Well-preserved, attractive and original 2-window front of early C18
12-pane sashes with fat glazing bars and with moulded timber cornices over the
ground floor windows. Central doorway up a couple of stone steps contains
original fielded 6-panel door and eared architrave to the overlight which also
has original glazing bars. Original pedimented hood on consoles. Shuttered
cellar windows in the footings. Moulded,timber eaves cornice and roof is
gable-ended containing 2 gabled dormers containing casement windows. Roof is
carried down over the rear outshots.

Interior: Is mostly original with a minimum of later modernisation. The
rooms are too small to need beams and are flat and plastered. Some of the
ceilings still include original lamp-hanging hooks. In the main ground and
first floor rooms the diagonal corner stacks are panelled with timber
chimneypieces. Panelling is fielded, so too are cupboard doors still hung on
original H-hinges. Principal rooms have fielded 2-panel doors. Good dogleg
staircase; open string with shaped stair brackets, moulded flat handrail and
slender turned balusters with blocks. Roof structure (in the attics) is
mostly plastered but appears to be of common rafter construction. In the
cellar the stone base of the chimneystack has canted sides, each containing a
round-headed niche. In the rear outshot the bakehouse fireplace is partly
blocked but it has a plain oak lintel and has the blocked doorway of an oven
and ashpit.

The Cottage has survived remarkably intact with little modernisation since the
place was built. Moreover, for such a small house, it is built to a very high
standard. It is almost a scaled-down version of the usual early C18 house.
According to the owner reporting local tradition it was built for the
retirmeent of a vicar. Its setting (facing onto the churchyard) and scale
gives credibility to the tradition. Also it forms part of a group of
attractive buildings in the vicinity of the Church of St Mary (q.v.).

Listing NGR: TQ5539341486

External Links

• Historic England Listing
• Wikidata Q17547602

External links are from the relevant listing authority and, where applicable, Wikidata. Wikidata IDs may be related buildings as well as this specific building. If you want to add or update a link, you will need to do so by editing the Wikidata entry.

Recommended Books

• 
  Herefordshire (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Nottinghamshire (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Hertfordshire (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Somerset: South and West (Pevsner Architectural Guides) (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Norfolk 1: Norwich and North-East: Norwich and North-east v. 1 (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Cambridgeshire (Pevsner Architectural Guides) (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)