Details
ODIHAM
1687/16/2 NORTH WARNBOROUGH STREET
26-JUN-87 (West side)
MOOR COTTAGE
II
A small three-bay, two-storey detached timber-framed, later (mid-C18) brick clad, cottage dated to 1649. An inscribed stone set in the chimney stack, reads 'R. I. K. Ano Dom 1649', and refers to Robert and Joan King who probably had the cottage built. The architect and builder are unknown. There is a c1950s red-brick extension to the rear (north) elevation.
MATERIALS: Red brick walling, in Flemish bond in the front (south) elevation and stretcher bond to the side (west) elevation, with a three brick deep first floor projecting band to the front elevation, encases an original timber-framed building. All the windows are mid-C20 wooden leaded casements, under flat brick arches. The doorway with wide canopy on brackets, also dates to this period. The roof is of red tile and is half-hipped, with a large catslide to the rear.
PLAN: Despite modernisation, which has removed some features, the original plan can still be read. It was of a three bay lobby-entrance plan, with one room either side of the entrance bay and three rooms over. Service rooms were in an outshoot below the catslide roof. The stairs were replaced in the c1950 alterations and it is believed that they were originally within a rear tower, set between the catslide roof and the rear outshot.
Internally, all principal rooms have exposed timber framing. Joists and beams can be seen in the ground-floor rooms and internal partitioning and the base of the roof structure in first-floor rooms. The beams of the principal ground floor room show evidence of chamfers and run-out stops. Only one (west) of the two front rooms was originally heated, by an inglenook fireplace, although a secondary fireplace has been inserted into the east wall of the dining room.
Internal inspection of the roof space was not possible in 2009.
HISTORY: Deeds from 1661 onwards show that the house we know today as Moor Cottage was part of an estate called Waites, which in turn was part of a much larger estate. The Wheeler papers record that part of the Estate was settled on Robert King by his mother Ann in 1635. William Reeves and his wife Joan established ownership of the estate in a deed of 1661 when Joan was described as, 'nee King'. The parish registers show she had been the widow of Robert King (d.1652) when she married William Reeves in 1657. It seems likely that Robert and Joan King built Moor Cottage in 1649, as recorded in the date stone inscription.
Documentary evidence shows that the cottage passed to Sarah Draper of Gogmersfield, widow, for £260 in 1699 from Robert King, yeoman. She let it to Thomas Linter, tenant farmer, and at this time it comprised 60 acres of arable lands, meadow ground, pasture, woods, as well as land within the curtilage of Moor Cottage. In 1734, the estate was bought for £400 by the Governors of Queen Anne's Bounty and the Rev. Francis Bishop, curate, 'for the augmentation of the maintenance of the poor clergy of the living of Bentley'. The vendor was William Draper, chandler (candlemaker) and eldest son and heir of Sarah Draper. This sale is recorded in the Heathcote papers and Moor Cottage is described as 'a messuage or tenement with the barns, stables and outbuildings, yards, gardens and appurtenances there to belonging abutted south by a highway, north by a common field and east and west by two tenements belonging to the College of Winchester'. More recently, in 1883, Moor Cottage together with 34 acres of land was bought by the Mildmays, the Lords of the Manor of Odiham, from the Governors of Queen Anne's Bounty. It was sold by the Mildmay family in 1920 and comprised Lot 27 in the sale of the outlying parts of the Dogmersfield Estate.
SOURCES:
Roberts, Edward. 2002. A Transitional House: Moor Cottage, North Warnborough. Hampshire Field Club and Archaeological Society Newsletter 37 Spring 2002. p 31
Millard, Sheila. 2002. A Date-stone Dilemma. Hampshire Field Club and Archaeological Society Newsletter 37 Spring 2002. p 32
Roberts, Edward. 2004. Hampshire Houses 1250 - 1700 Their Dating & Development. Hampshire County Council
REASONS FOR DESIGNATION:
Moor Cottage is designated for the following principal reasons:
* Architectural Interest: a mid-C17 cottage, which retains significant historic fabric with much of the internal framing surviving;
* Historic Interest: the later, mid-C18 refronting is of interest in its own right, as an attempt to raise the status of the building;
* Rarity and Intactness: despite modernisation the original plan form is clearly legible.
