MEM22347 - Old Garden Cottage (24) and West Cottage (Little Zephyr and Zephyr Cottage), Lydiate Lane, Lynton (Building)

Pair of houses, with garden boundary walls. Possibly C17, largely rebuilt early C19. Rendered, slate roofs partly replaced in asbestos slate. Symmetrical 2-room cottages with centre hall and stair, and rear service wing. 2 storeys; 3+3-window range. Old Garden Cottage has 2-light 8-pane casements with thin mullions above one 10-pane casement and a French door with margin-panes. Centred in a trellised gabled porch is a wide door with upper part glazed, including margin-panes. The plain gable to the road has a large external stack, the upper part in brick. At the rear is a wing with very wide gable, with plain plate-glass sashes. The rear slope and the wing have asphalted slates. West Cottage, to the right, generally not accessible, but is similar in format to Old Garden Cottage, with 2-light casements to the first floor. It has asbestos-cement slate roofing. At the rear is a wide gabled extension, also a large eaves stack, slate hung, but with some early brickwork, probably C18, in the upper part. INTERIOR: Old Garden Cottage only inspected. Ground floor right has later inserted French doors with full-height shutters, and a C19 fire surround with pilasters and paterae, and the original cast-iron grate; the left-hand room has been subdivided to form a passageway to the rear. It has a corner 'shell' cupboard. The rear kitchen is very low ceiled, less than 2m high, and has C19 two-plank doors. The 2 front bedrooms have coved ceilings, and there are 2-panel doors on L-hinges. A passage behind these rooms leads to a doorway, now closed off, into the adjoining property. SUBSIDIARY FEATURES: on the side adjacent to Lydiate Lane is a high rubble boundary wall with on-edge coping stones, reaching the eaves of the cottage, and following the slope of the lane down to the junction with Queen Street at the bottom, where it terminates in an unclosed end without quoins. Near the front of the cottage is a plank door. Across the back of both properties is a further wall enclosing a paved yard, which is at a lower level than the adjoining access way. It is in thin-bedded rubble to a rough weathered coping, and with iron access gates to the lane. These cottages, although remodelled in the C19, are claimed to date from 1680; the small scale and low ceiling heights, especially to the rear, makes this possible, as does the site near the centre of the old settlement in Lynton. The houses are concealed from the roads by the high wall and surrounding properties, and on early Ordnance maps are shown as sharing one common garden area, now sub-divided. The first-floor linking door would corroborate a single ownership at some stage. [1] A pair of houses, largely concealed from the road by surrounding properties and a high wall. They are claimed to date from 1680 and were formerly a single property, largely rebuilt in the early 19th Century. The exterior is rendered with a large slate-hung eaves stack and early brick upper part. The listing details specify some good 19th Century interior fittings. [2] The buildings were visited in April 2012 as part of the rapid condition survey of Exmoor's Listed Buildings 2012-13. They received a BAR score of 6. [3] These structures appear to be visible on the 1840 Lynton Tithe map. [4] The buildings are mentioned in the 2019 Conservation Area Appraisal for Lynton. [5]