Linked as they so often appear together in photographs:
Brook Cottage and Horn Cottage 1900. As you can see Red Lodge had not yet been built. Brook Cottage had been the workhouse and in 1841, 30 people were living there.
Horn Cottage 1950 shows its back garden when Charles and Betty Weeden lived there. In times gone by, it was a pub called 'The Horns'.
Brook Cottage is a symmetrical “Cottage Ornee”, built of stone with brick quoins, clay roof tiles and with thin drip mouldings above the windows. The style is of a 17th century central chimney house but the house is not timber-framed and would seem to be of a late 18th century rebuild on an earlier site.
The cottage was The Poor House and in the 1861 census there were twenty-six occupants of whom eight were aged over 80 years!
Two loft openings were made from the original bedrooms in 1980 and chalk dates showing “1851” were found on the chimney base. Considerable quantities of straw and other debris were lying on and between the rafters perhaps indicating a previous thatched roof.
During excavations in 1994 a clay bottle was unearthed from a hole at the side of the brook and has been dated between 15th and 16th centuries, possibly confirming earlier occupation the site.
The cottage was extended in the 1970s and again more considerably in 1894 when the old staircase was removed and new stairs installed to give access to both the original bedrooms in the old cottage and the new rooms at the rear of the enlarged structure.
The present owners, Alison and Peter Anderson and family, have lived in the Cottage since 1978. June 1997
June 1997