Description

LITTLETON AND HARESTOCK

148/0/10012 MAIN ROAD
St Swithun's Cottage

GV II
House. Early C16 former open hall, altered in the C18 when a chimney was inserted and a further bay added to the north, refenestrated and extended to the rear in the later C20. Timberframed, exterior now rendered with hipped thatched roof and C18 brick chimneystack to rear slope. One storey and attics: four windows. Plan form was a three bay hall house with central open bay, parlour bay to north and service bay to south.
EXTERIOR: Front or west elevation has three eyebrow dormers. Both dormers and ground floor windows are late C20 uPVC casement windows, some within earlier openings. Timber and herringbone brick porch with penticed tiled roof to penultimate bay to north. South front has one C20 casement window. West or garden front now obscured by later one storey flat-roofed extension with C20 doors and casement windows.
INTERIOR: The penultimate bay to the north, which was the original parlour, has chamfered axial joists with runout stops of C18 date and the former open hall, the penultimate bay to the south, has an inserted C18 chamfered spine beam with runout stops, chamfered floor joists and a corner fireplace with wooden bressumer. The wall frame is visible. Upstairs the south bedroom has a corner C18 fireplace with built-in brick and cast iron duck's nest grate. The partition wall survives and the top of the wallplate is visible together with curved tension braces. There is an C18 plank door with pintle hinges. The central bedroom has the top of the wallplate and upright posts visible and curved tension braces. The north bedroom in the C18 extension has the top of the wallplate visible, end queenposts, 3 plank door with pintle hinges and rafters visible. The roof has central open hall bay with heavily sooted rafters, windbraces and laths, undiminished principals and clasped purlins. The end bays of the mediaeval house have later pole rafters, possibly C18 in date.
HISTORY: The Bellinger family owned the property in the C16 and C17 until at least 1735-6 and the first reference to a William Bellynger appears in a court homage as early as 1555. By the time of the enclosures in the early C19 the property had passed into the hands of Edward Fitt who was occupying the manor of Littleton. Photographs of 1909 show the south side of the ground floor was a post office at this time and the building was occupied by Isaac Penton, an agricultural labourer, Rose Penton, Post Mistress and their sixteen children.

Late mediaeval timberframed former open hall house with central open hall later ceiled over but retaining smoke-blackened roof.

External Links

• Historic England Listing
• Wikidata Q26670657

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

• 
  Bristol (Pevsner Architectural Guides: City Guides)
• 
  Hertfordshire (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Suffolk: West: The Buildings of England (Pevsner Architectural Guides) (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Surrey (The Buildings of England) (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Herefordshire (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  London 1: The City of London: City of London v. 1 (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)