Powder Mill Cottage

POWDER MILL COTTAGE, LITTLETON LANE

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Overview

Heritage Category:
Listed Building
Grade:
II
List Entry Number:
1389623
Date first listed:
13-Dec-2001
List Entry Name:
Powder Mill Cottage
Statutory Address:
POWDER MILL COTTAGE, LITTLETON LANE
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Official list entry

Heritage Category:
Listed Building
Grade:
II
List Entry Number:
1389623
Date first listed:
13-Dec-2001
List Entry Name:
Powder Mill Cottage
Statutory Address 1:
POWDER MILL COTTAGE, LITTLETON LANE

The scope of legal protection for listed buildings

This List entry helps identify the building designated at this address for its special architectural or historic interest.

Unless the List entry states otherwise, it includes both the structure itself and any object or structure fixed to it (whether inside or outside) as well as any object or structure within the curtilage of the building.

For these purposes, to be included within the curtilage of the building, the object or structure must have formed part of the land since before 1st July 1948.

Understanding list entries

Corrections and minor amendments

The scope of legal protection for listed buildings

This List entry helps identify the building designated at this address for its special architectural or historic interest.

Unless the List entry states otherwise, it includes both the structure itself and any object or structure fixed to it (whether inside or outside) as well as any object or structure within the curtilage of the building.

For these purposes, to be included within the curtilage of the building, the object or structure must have formed part of the land since before 1st July 1948.

Understanding list entries

Corrections and minor amendments

Location

Statutory Address:
POWDER MILL COTTAGE, LITTLETON LANE

The building or site itself may lie within the boundary of more than one authority.

District:
North Somerset (Unitary Authority)
Parish:
Winford
National Grid Reference:
ST5508264316

Details

ST 56 SE
1816/7/10025
13-DEC-01

WINFORD
LITTLETON LANE
Powder Mill Cottage

GV
II

Probable former cooperage and cottage on gunpowder mill, now house. Mid C18, re-roofed mid C20. Uncoursed limestone rubble, tall, thin quoins and dressings to the right 2-window section, brick gable and ridge stacks, and concrete tile roof.

PLAN: Single-depth plan with chimneys at both ends of long left-hand section, and to shorter section to right. Built across N gable of Powdermill Farmhouse (qv).

EXTERIOR: 2 storey; eight-window range, with wooden lintels to closely-spaced windows with mid-C20 casements, first-floor wall-plate lintels, and glazed doors to entrances second from left and between third and fourth windows from right. Right gable has a large exterior stack on a rubble base with a late-C20 inserted doorway to the left.

INTERIOR: Long E ground-floor room has a large fireplace in E end under a chamfered beam with an oven to the right, a smaller stack at opposite end faced with later brick, heavy chamfered beams, some with filled joist holes, and later small-scantling joists. Small heated end room, the rear wall contains a shallow arched recess. Upper floor has mid-C20 room divisions.

HISTORY: Littleton gunpowder mill operated for about a century from the early C18. It was one of three in Somerset which were started to supply local mining interests and also foreign markets through the port of Bristol, and all of which closed by the mid-C19. It is the best surviving gunpowder works from this period in the country.

Cooperages were a central part of a gunpowder works. The open layout suggests this is not a domestic building, and the close fenestration is similar to cooperages elsewhere, notably at Powdermill Farm at Postbridge (qv), on Dartmoor in Devon. The slightly different right-hand section was probably been built as a dwelling.

(Buchanan, B and Tucker, MT, 'The Manufacture of Gunpowder', Industrial Archaeology Review, V. 3. 1981; Crocker, G, The Gunpowder Mills Gazetteer, 1988; Former Avon County SMR entry 2190; Gilson R G, Unpublished VAG Report, September 1979)

Legacy

The contents of this record have been generated from a legacy data system.

Legacy System number:
488311
Legacy System:
LBS

Sources

Books and journals
Crocker, G, The Gunpowder Mills Gazetteer, (1988)
Avon County Sites and Monuments Record in No 2190, ()
Buchanan, B J, Tucker, M T, Industrial Archaeology Review in The Manufacture of Gunpowder: A Study of the Documentary and Physical Evidence Relating to the Woolley Powder Works near Bath, Vol. 3, (1981)
Gilson, R G, Vernacular Architecture Group Report in Vernacular Architecture Group Report, (1979)

Legal

This building is listed under the Planning (Listed Buildings and Conservation Areas) Act 1990 as amended for its special architectural or historic interest.

Ordnance survey map of Powder Mill Cottage

Map

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© Crown copyright [and database rights] 2026. OS AC0000815036. Use of this mapping is subject to Terms and Conditions.

End of official list entry

All text content is available under the Open Government Licence v3.0 , except where otherwise stated. Any supplied maps are © Crown Copyright [and database rights] 2026 OS AC0000815036 and may not be reproduced without permission.

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