Source/Archive record SEM8584 - Riverside, 22, Park Street, Dunster: Heritage appraisal and impact assessment in consideration of proposed rear extension

The building was assessed in advance of a planning application for a proposed rear extension and internal alterations. The cottage is constructed of rubble stone, potentially with some cob and finished with a roughcast white painted render, set under a gable end roof covered in pantiles. Each gable has a chimney serving it with brick stacks. The building has been extended centrally to the rear, first only on the ground floor but with a first floor added later, and with lean tos added to either side of the extension. The interior of the original cottage comprises two rooms with no central passage. Each has an inglenook fireplace and a stair turret with a newel stair rises to the rear of the southern room, with the roof extending in a catslide to accommodate the stair. The extension accomodates a kitchen on the ground floor. The first floor of the cottage has a landing within the body of the original building. It gives access to two bedrooms and an opening in the rear, west wall into the extension where there is a third bedroom and bathroom. The landing and bedrooms have the exposed feet of an apparently 18th Century roof structure, where the lower ties of the trusses have been cut at some time (probably for additional head height), accounting for the external buttressing to the building. Binding suggests that the property is one of the oldest in Dunster but if so, the cottage has been significantly rebuilt as the roof is not likely to predate the 18th Century. The ground plan of the property has changed over time and is shown on historic mapping. The ground floor of the extension appears to have been added as a lean to structure between 1840 and 1889 and the first floor between 1904 and 1929. Riverside is a well preserved example of a humbler worker's cottage despite the rear extension as the addition has been made in a way that allows the original plan form, character and appearance of the cottage to be readily appreciated. It is therefore an important survival.