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Summary

Sedgewell Cottage was originally built as an open hall house in the late medieval period. A series of alterations from the 17th century included the insertion of a chimney and the introduction of a first floor. The building was subsequently divided into multiple homes. By later 19th century it appears to have become two cottages; Hiller Cottage and Sedgewell Cottage. It has now been restored and updated as a single dwelling.

Location

Protected Status

• Listed Building (II) 1168329: HILLER COTTAGE AND SEDGEWELL COTTAGE

Other References/Statuses: none recorded

Monument Type(s) and Dates

• HOUSE (Built, XVII to XVIII - 1601 AD (Between) to 1800 AD (Between))

Full description

Ordnance Survey, 2025, Mastermap 2025 (Cartographic). SDV366286.

Pair of cottages on the north-west side of Hiller Lane.

Historic England, 2025, National Heritage List for England 2025, 1168329 (National Heritage List for England). SDV366287.

Sedgewell Cottage
Summary
A detached late medieval house, originally built as a open hall house. The fire smoke was originally vented through the roof, but later a chimney was inserted along with other improvements. It would have been the home of a relatively wealthy farmer, as indicated by the good quality carpentry still in evidence within the building. A series of alterations from the 17th century included the introduction of a first floor with bedrooms and, later, the subdivision of the building into multiple homes. From the later 20th century, it has been restored and updated as a single home.
Reasons for Designation
Sedgewell Cottage and outbuilding, Netherton, are listed at Grade II for the following principal reasons:
Architectural interest: as a pre-1700 vernacular building with later adaptations this is an early and noteworthy example of an historic dwelling; it is well-constructed in cob and stone with notable features including a stone stair turret with wind-eye and nesting holes, good oak joinery including a plank and muntin screen and smoke-blackened roof timbers and thatching straw with ladder rafters; the evidence of change including the insertion of a first floor in the early C17 and other extensions and alterations, including the possible shippon use at the lower end, illustrate the evolved historic use of the building; the building retains a substantial proportion of its historic fabric.
Historic interest: the construction method of the built fabric is regionally distinctive with later alterations carried out in harmony with the vernacular traditions of Devon; * the plan form illustrates late medieval domestic arrangements and how they developed in later centuries.
Group value:with the modest thatched outbuilding constructed of sandstone and of pre-1850 date.
History
The hamlet of Netherton may have origins as a C12 rural estate to the south of the River Teign. Sedgewell Cottage was probably built in around the C15 or C16 and may have been built for a wealthy yeoman farmer given the high quality of carpentry. The building form and its position, set within the hillside, indicates it may have been constructed in the longhouse tradition despite the relatively great distance from Dartmoor where the building type is more common. Longhouses typically accommodated livestock at one, lower end of the building with human occupants in the adjacent rooms.
The primary phase of the building was of jointed cruck construction and heated by an open hearth in the central hall open to the roof, with unheated rooms to each end. A succession of improvements were made from the C16 or early C17, probably commencing with the insertion of an axial stack to the hall and the insertion of a floor above and stone stair turret projecting from the front wall (east). Later in the C17, a new roof was built across the length of the building, preserving parts of the medieval roof structure to the hall, and first-floor accommodation introduced to each end of the house. This could have been the period that the rubble stone envelope of the building was raised in cob. The south (parlour) end fireplace may have had a smoke hood, later removed when a first floor was inserted. Further alterations appear to have taken place in the C17 and C18 including to exterior walls and their openings, to ground floor room proportions and interior decorative schemes.
By the 1837-1839 tithe surveys of Combeinteignhead Parish, Sedgewell Cottage was divided into three dwellings as part of ‘Bailey’s Tenement’ with a mixture of orchards, pasture and arable land. It was presumably occupied by agricultural labourers and their families. A feature marked in the garden to the west of the south end of the building is either a well or the sandstone privy outbuilding that is shown on the First Edition Ordnance Survey map of 1890. By this period the house seems to have been reconfigured as two dwellings with the smaller south end later called Hiller Cottage. In the later C20, the building was reunited as a single dwelling and two single-storey, flat-roofed extensions were built to the rear. A careful restoration programme was carried out by the owner in the late C20 with new window frames and other joinery, the removal of modern finishes such as cement render to the exterior and a limewash applied, as well as thatching in water reed. Some early soot-blackened straw remains in the roof above the hall.
Sedgewell Cottage was depicted in a painting of 1905 by Harold Joseph Swanwick (1866-1929) that in 2025 hangs in the cottage.
Details
A cottage of C15 or C16 origin with C17-C19 and later alterations. There is an associated detached garden outbuilding of early-C19 date or earlier.
MATERIALS: constructed of local rubblestone, some dressed, cob and with floor and roof structures of elm with other elm fittings including doors, floorboards and plank and muntin screen. Some floors are stone flagged. The exterior walls are finished in limewash and the roofs thatched in water reed with a wheat straw ridge.
PLAN: built on a north-east/ south-west orientation on a site that elevates to the south-west. It is of four unequal bays to the ground floor, an altered medieval plan, of single depth with a central hall and upper and lower end rooms. The location of any former cross passage is uncertain. The lower (north) end comprises an elongated bay, possibly on the footprint of a former shippon. The upper end is separated from the hall by a plank and muntin screen and is further subdivided by an historic stud partition to the south to form a narrow room with a modern staircase to the first floor. The first-floor rooms are a modern arrangement and on varying floor heights with exposed roof structure above.
EXTERIOR: the uneven stone elevations (cob above wall plate level) are limewashed with a variety of small window openings scattered across the façade to both floors. The central bay, to the left of a C20 projecting thatched porch, is broken forward and incorporates a stair turret with a wind eye. Under the eaves above the porch are at least four nesting holes. Towards the north end of the façade are traces of a former door opening, now infilled to a small window. To the far left, the south end of the façade has a central door with window to the left. The window to the right may be a former door and has a two-light window to the eaves above.
To the rear are a variety of openings and the ground floor left window is early with a plain timber mullion. Most, but not all, other windows have late C20 frames in the same style. The bays to the right of the rear elevation have mainly been enclosed within C20 single-storey additions that are not included in the listing. The south gable end incorporates a projecting chimney, probably with a former bread oven, and has a brick stack and offset.
The roof is steeply hipped and is gabled to the south to include the end stack. There are two ridge heights across the building, aligning with the topography, with an axial stack. To the rear is a single eyebrow dormer.
INTERIOR: the principal entrance (right of centre) leads to a lobby with C17/C18 doors to the hall and lower end, either side of an axial chimney breast with back-to-fireplaces. The lower end is a long three-bay room with three chamfered crossbeams with scrolled nick stops. Most of the joists are replacements with simple chamfers. The fireplace has a replaced bressumer and there are coarse rubble jamb. To the right is a step up into the central hall through a plank door. The east wall behind the door has traces of a former doorway.
The central hall has an altered fireplace at the north end and a plank and muntin screen at the south end. The screen is on a raised cill height, indicating that the hall floor level has been dropped. There are two chamfered cross beams with stepped run-out stops, and joists with similar mouldings. The stair turret in the north-east corner of the hall has a newel staircase that was enclosed from the hall in the late-C20/ C21 when a substantial stop-chamfered post was fitted under one of the crossbeams. An historic doorway to the modern rear kitchen extension has an infilled lintel above. There is the exposed base of a roof truss in the right jamb of the doorway. To the left is a wide window with timber mullion and lintel constructed using reused roof timbers.
There are two steps up from the hall, through the screen doorway with an altered head, to a narrow room with a modern inserted lateral staircase with C17 stair window. The ceiling below the stair has trimmers from an earlier staircase. The south face of the plank and muntin screen has been altered to remove mouldings and there are traces of a former paint scheme. A trimmer rests on projecting pegs at the top of the screen and below the joists to the head beam. There is a modest C18 fireplace to the corner of the east wall. The north wall is an historic stud partition with a trimmer carrying the plain pit-sawn joists and a doorway to the southern bay of the building. The south room, possibly the medieval parlour, has a large C17 lateral beam with bar and run-out stop and scratch-moulded joists. In the south-west corner is a large fireplace with former bread oven and coarse rubble jambs with possible hacked back corbels of a former smoke bay.
To the first-floor, the feet of slender roof trusses are exposed to the south rooms. In the rooms above the central hall there are exposed, heavily-sooted jointed cruck trusses and some sections of purlins and rafters to the west roofslope. Some trusses were formerly closed and the truncated remains of braces have been left in their mortices. The outer face to the southern truss is not blackened, indicating the southern bay was enclosed from the hall to apex level. Two empty purlin mortices show that the medieval roof extended across the current south end of the building. Above, the remaining cruck trusses are pegged into a diagonally-set ridge piece and there is smoke blackened straw between heavily-sooted laths. The ridge height has been raised in a post-medieval roof structure around the remains of the early roof.
The north end, beyond the stone stack to the hall, is at lower level and has five collared trusses with purlins, some with visible masons’ assembly marks. Some bays have exposed ladder purlins between the trusses. The room to the of the hall chimneybreast has five collared trusses with purlins.
SUBSIDIARY FEATURES: a garden outbuilding to the rear is roughly square on plan and constructed of rubble sandstone with machine-sawn roof principals under thatched water reed. There are two door openings to the principal (east) elevation.
Date first listed: 2nd December 1988. Date of most recent amendment: 18th July 2025

Sources / Further Reading

Associated Monuments: none recorded

Associated Finds: none recorded

Associated Events: none recorded

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