Sunnybrae

Reasons for Designation

Sunnybrae is designated at Grade II for the following principal reasons:

* It is a good survival of a little-altered smallholder's cottage, possibly originally a squatter's cottage, reflecting the vernacular traditions of the area * Its historic plan remains clearly legible * It conveys, in its exterior plainness and the sparseness of interior spaces and fittings, an honest and legible expression of rural domestic accommodation of a very simple type: the home of a smallholder or squatter at the end of the C18 or start of the C19 * Very few of these relatively humble and once common cottages now remain relatively unaltered, making Sunnybrae an increasingly rare survival

Details

CAYNHAM

482-1/0/10003 CAYNHAM ROAD 13-MAR-09 Clee Hill (South side) 13 Sunnybrae

II Cottage, possibly originally a squatter's cottage, with an attached outshut. Dated late C18 or early C19 with later C19 alterations and addition

MATERIALS: Uncoursed local basalt stone with a gabled plain tile roof with an external stone stack with brick shaft.

PLAN: The cottage is oriented north west-south east and is built into a bank, and on ground which rises to the north east. It has a single depth plan with a single storey outshut, possibly a former cowshed to north west gable end.

EXTERIOR: Front (south west) elevation: Two bays and one and a half storeys with a stack to far right and a C20 brick porch to centre right. This entrance is flanked by windows with C20 metal-framed casements, and there are two similar gabled eaves dormers to the attic. To the far right is the large, stepped stack with a bread oven on its west side. Attached to the left of the cottage is the single storey outshut, with a C20 half-glazed door to the left and a window with wooden frame. The rear elevation has a small ground floor window with wooden frame. The outshut has a window and a doorway with half-glazed door to the front elevation, and a two-light casement window under a segmental-arched brick lintel in its north west gable end.

INTERIOR: The main entrance has a chamfered timber surround, probably of late C19 date, and leads into the right hand heated room which has a chamfered axial beam with straight cut stops. A C20 fireplace has been inserted into the original inglenook, though the latter may survive behind the later plaster. The left hand room has a similar chamfered spine beam and is unheated. A doorway connects through to the outshut which now contains a bathroom. The two inter-connecting bedrooms on the upper storey are accessed via a timber winder stair leading off the left hand room. These rooms are arranged without a corridor, with one room opening into the next, separated by a stone internal wall. The right hand bedroom retains a simple C19 wooden fire surround. Both the cottage and its outshut have single purlin rafter roofs.

HISTORY: On the commons of the southern Clee Hills farming was (increasingly from the C16) combined with industrial activities such as coal mining and quarrying. In these areas smallholdings and squatters' cottages could be found fringing and encroaching onto the moorland, which provided common grazing. Their presence reflects the quarrying and mining opportunities which drew `pioneer' miner smallholders into the area in the past; who would often build cottages on a piece of wasteland paying an annual fee to the landowner. Sunnybrae is depicted on the First Edition Ordnance Survey map of 1884 and from its fabric appears to date from the late C18 or early C19.

SOURCES http://www.discovershropshire.org.uk/html/search/advanced?fields%5Btype%5D%5B%5D=&keyword=squatter&submit=Go&keywordSubmit=true http://www.caynham.eclipse.co.uk/history/booklet/chapter_2.htm www.shropshirehillsanob.co.uk

REASON FOR DESIGNATION: Sunnybrae is designated at Grade II for the following principal reasons: * It is a good survival of a relatively little-altered smallholder's cottage, possibly originally a squatter's cottage, reflecting the vernacular traditions of the area * Its historic plan remains clearly legible * It conveys, in its exterior plainness and the sparseness of interior spaces and fittings, an honest and legible expression of rural domestic accommodation of a very simple type: the home of a smallholder or squatter at the end of the C18 or start of the C19 * Very few of these humble and once common cottages now remain relatively unaltered, making Sunnybrae an increasingly rare survival

Legacy

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

Legacy System number:

506623

Legacy System:

LBS

End of official list entry

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