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Donkey Green’s Cottage is a building
that began as a small cottage but has since more than tripled
in the area of its ground plan. The original cottage is well
set back from and at a right-angle to Long Acre East. The
earliest part is only 8.4m (27ft) long, and averages in width
about 4.15m (about 13½ft), a ratio of 2:1. A detached
brick shed by the lane, now used as a garage, was probably
a cart shed or store. The cottage was captured in a photograph
taken before 1900 (Plate
16), which shows a small service addition at its north
end and a hand-pump not dissimilar to the listed one at no
21 Long Acre, but neither now remain. It is still known as
Donkey Green’s Cottage after Robert Green who is shown
to the left of the photograph on a cart pulled by a donkey.
The building was sold by the Crown Commission to a Leonard
Saxon Braithwaite in 1931 and today it is owned by Ann Hancock
(see house histories page). In recent times the cottage has
received considerable modernisation and has been extended
northwards with a range of rooms and a west wing, all of one-storey
construction. The only upper room is in the roof-space of
the original cottage.
The photograph shows a thatched cottage
with an east frontage that can still be identified today.
Timbers can be discerned in the walling, there are three ground-floor
windows and possibly a higher one showing, and a woman stands
in the doorway close to the corner of the cottage. The now
removed addition was brick-built and had a thatched covering
in poor condition, with odd tiles patching holes in it. The
far south end gable shows as a jagged outline of bricks, their
angle of pitch slightly steeper than the present pantiled
roof (set at 50º), and the north end of the roof appears
to show a stack, since removed.
The south frontage today has an irregular
collection of vertical and horizontal timbers showing and
bricks that vary in size. Below the window sills the bricks
tend to be 2½ ins (63mm) thick and 9¼ ins (235mm)
long, but higher up they are slightly bigger at nearer to
2¾ ins (70mm) and 9½ ins (241mm) respectively.
The coursing is a variation of Flemish stretcher bond, with
instead of having a standard Flemish course (alternating headers
and stretchers) and then 1-3 stretcher courses, here the Flemish
courses run as 2-3 headers together and then 2 stretchers.
The west face has similar brickwork, several modern windows
(one a bow) and an infilled one towards the south end. There
is only a single horizontal timber showing. The south gable-end
has been rebuilt with a more modern brick (27/8ins; 73mm thick)
and this shows as a scar near the end of the east wall. It
was not possible to determine whether the same had happened
to the north gable-end.
On the east frontage there are several
casement windows, the one nearest the south end an enlargement
of what was there before (see
Plate 16). Towards the north end of the original building
there are two straight joints that indicate a former doorway,
85cm (33ins) wide. The brick infill is similar to those in
the south gable end, and there are timbers which may be what
remains of a door-jamb, a lintel and possibly the bottom rail
of an upper opening. Behind the infill there is the cross-beam
and its vertical support post which implies that the door
opening was fairly constricted, to a width of about 55cm (22ins).
This part of the walling also displays a significant bulge
or angle change in plan (Fig.
9), which suggests movement and perhaps explains why both
the doorway was filled in and then later the walling to the
right was rebuilt when the building was being extended. A
turn in the wall, although now consisting of modern brick,
marks the position of the original cottage’s north-east
corner. Beyond here there is a range of single-storey rooms
extending for another 14m to the north, and with a wing extending
6m to the west. In keeping with the original cottage these
parts are whitewashed and have pantiles on the roofs. There
is an enclosed garden on the west side.
Internally, the original part of the
cottage is now used as sleeping quarters with bedrooms at
ground-floor and attic level, the latter reached by stairs
in a dressing room (Room
2). The original north end-wall of the cottage has been
removed at ground-floor level and a steel beam probably now
supports the remaining upper part of the wall. Non-structural
half-brick thick walls now divide three rooms (Rooms 1-3)
from a passage and a hall, and enclose a kitchen and shower-room
(Rooms 5, 6). The attic area still has a small window at the
north end and the south wall has an infilled window and open
brickwork suggestive of former chimney-flues. Apart from these
and surviving internal timbers and the position of windows
there is little remaining of the cottage’s pre-20th
century internal layout or fittings.
There are enough timbers surviving both
on the outside and the inner face of the east elevation to
show that this building was originally timber-framed with
probable mud infill, and that it had a steep thatched roof.
Its original form is not dissimilar in appearance to that
showing in the photograph from just before 1900 (Plate
16). Most of the timbers are still in their original positions.
Three internal timbers were sampled for dendrochronology but
only one (sample 2, Fig
9) could be dated, to somewhere in the 1570s or 1580s.
The timber in question (in the foreground of Plate
14) is a vertical support for the cross-beam still attached
to it. Whilst it not inconceivable that the cottage dates
from then, proof cannot be carried on one sample alone; the
timber may conceivably have been reused from another building.
The brickwork in the south gable wall
(2 7/8 ins; 73mm thick) is later than the side walling (its
scar is shown in Fig.
10), and this might suggest the earlier presence of a
timber truss and possibly a cruck-frame that had to be replaced;
if so, this would support an early date for the building.
It was not possible to determine whether the brickwork at
the north end was a similar replacement of earlier walling.
As with many timber-framed structures,
the infilling was eventually replaced by brick, although parts
of the original material may survive behind the bricks and
explain the variations in the east wall’s thickness
and undulating nature, which is especially pronounced near
the south-east corner of Room 1. Two of the east windows are
set in a central length of thinner walling only a half-brick
thick where the original walling may have been removed en
block below where new casement windows were inserted
The brickwork dates from somewhere in
the 18th century, as indicated by the brick size mentioned
in the description above. Most of the west wall was rebuilt
or re-faced and only one timber remains on show; other may
survive under the plaster on the inside faces. This wall is
straight whilst the east wall has bowed. This kink shows inside
too, on the left of the passageway in Plate
14. This view also shows horizontal wall timbers plates,
one joining the cross-beam at the same level, and another
just beneath the ceiling. These are in original positions
– at joist level (other joist seatings show in the top
of the cross-beam), and at wall-plate level, where the roof
begins. The cross-beam, although it has been moved slightly
is still at its original height, and the ceiling would have
been about 2m (6½ft) above ground level, which is comparable
to the floor heights in the other two buildings surveyed.
The cross-beam spanned the building rather
than set axially as found in the other buildings surveyed.
It has been moved slightly at its west end when a window was
inserted. The second vertical timber in the passageway (Plate
14), a sizeable timber that still extends through to the
outer face, may mark the position of a stud-wall and a north-south
room division; it has mortices from adjoining partition timbers
still showing (Plate
15). If so, the cottage would have had two rooms, the
south one about 13½ft (4.1m) long and the other about
11½ft (3.5m) long, both with a width of about 12ft
(3.65m). Today, the roof still starts from about the position
of the earliest wall plates and the angle of the roof replicates
that of the earlier structure. The building would have been
1½ storeys high, with an upper garret / loft, open
to the roof and used principally for storage, or perhaps for
sleeping. Today, this area, with its floor higher than previously
and with probably less headroom, is used as a bedroom.
A cottage such as this may originally
have had a single hearth. The end stacks, for which there
is evidence of one at either end, may date from different
periods. Plate
16 shows the outline of bricks at the south gable-end
but no stack. This wall was probably replaced after 1900 as
the bricks used are similar to those infilling the doorway
where of the woman stands in the photograph. These are a standard
3 x 9ins (76 x 229mm) in size. More recent developments in
the original building have included the heightening of the
ceiling level (section in Fig.
10) with the insertion of a completely new upper floor,
supported by 3ins (76mm) timbers, and a new room layout. The
building has been extended in at least two phases –
the first for Rooms 3 and 4, and secondly for Rooms 6 and
7, and the wing, Room 7. The first phase had occurred before
1964 when the extended property is shown on a sale plan, and
the second phase is relatively recent as the brickwork is
stretcher bond, indicative of breeze-block construction.
There is a strong possibility that
this building dates from the late 16th century, although one
tree-ring date alone is far from conclusive. Its brickwork
is of 18th century date, which is a period when many older
buildings were ‘improved.’ The building was subjected
to further structural alterations in the 20th century, culminating
in a major re-roofing and extension in recent times.
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