More information : Built in 1912 as a pair of semi-detached, single storey cottages for reservoir construction workers, one half of the pair was demolished in early 2008.The last remaining building of a purpose-built village for the construction workers which built on terraces cut into the hillside above the reservoir. The cottage has a weatherboarded timber frame, red asbestos tiled roof set in a diamond pattern with grey ridge tiles, and a brick stack. The roof is double-pitched with a half hip to the outer side elevation. On the south side is a truncated central gable, originally shared by both properties. It has a combination of two and three-light casement windows with small-pane glazing, and a single-light window to what was the larder on the north side of the house. There is a doorway into the kitchen on the north side, with probable replacement four-panelled door, and a plain board door on the south side from the living room into the garden.
Inside, the property has a kitchen, a living room, a dining room, 2 bedrooms and a bathroom. The doors throughout are plain board doors with metal handles. The kitchen, on the north side of the building, has a boarded, sloping ceiling and a wide chimney breast on its inner wall, originally fitted with a range, with built-in cupboards to the west side. At the east end of the kitchen was a small larder running its width, the partition wall now removed, but the location marked by a ceiling batten. Opening off the kitchen (larder) is a bedroom in the north-east corner, and the living room on the south side of the building. It has an angled chimney breast on its inner wall with a stone fireplace and hearth, perhaps a later replacement of the original fireplace. Doorways in both side walls lead into the dining room in the south-east corner, and the main bedroom in the south-west corner. In the north-west corner is the bathroom, reached from the kitchen, which also has a doorway into the main bedroom.
The cottage was assessed for listing in 2008, but did not meet the criteria for inclusion in the list for the following reasons:
Whilst an unusual survival of a specific building type, housing reservoir construction workers, it is severely compromised by the loss of the other half of what were a symmetrical pair of single-storey, timber cottages sharing a central gable.
It has lost the context of the planned workers' settlement, of which it was one element, with all other contemporary timber houses and public infrastructure buildings such as school, hospital, and mission hall, having gone, replaced by modern, stone-built housing unrelated to the reservoirs.
It was built as a temporary building, and as such lacks innovative construction or interesting fixtures or fittings. In addition there has been a degree of alteration to the original internal layout. (1) |