Building record 1245130000 - COLESHILL COTTAGE

Grade II. Dated 1809. Block of four cottages now one house. Rubble flint with red brick dressings and diaperings. Old tile roof with dentil brick eaves. Two storeys, each former cottage has central door with modern open gabled porch (removed in one case). 3 and 2-light casement each side with flat arches. Two similar windows above with blank recess containing stone tablets dated 1810 above porch. Bottle end diaper ornament to first floor. Gable end to road has two windows to each floor and tiles set in gable inscribed 'CWF 1809' and 'SMF 1809' (B1).
The house was known to Pevsner as Bottle Cottages, and to an earlier generation as Coldridge. Until recently it was four cottages arranged two-by-two as a 'back-to-back'. The southeast unit is older than the others, having curved wind-braces, queen struts and clasped purlins, and is certainly seventeenth century. Whether it is pre-Civil War is doubtful, however; at that time houses for 10 acre holdings (as this was) tended to be of 1 1/2 storeys, and this is two full storeys. The interior has been so much altered that the original layout is not recoverable, but the roof gives the overall size of the house: c. 22' x 14' (6.76 x 4.3 m). [Documentary, social and economic history of building] (B2).