Thatch Cottage Chawston
Thatch Cottage March 2010
Bedfordshire's Historic Environment Record [HER] lists every historic building and landscape feature in the county. A summary for each entry can now be consulted on-line as part of the Heritage Gateway website.
The entry for Thatch Cottage [HER 12457] ascribes the structure to the 18th century. The cottage is built of colourwashed render over brick and is one of four thatched cottages in Nags Lane. It comprises one storey with attics and stands almost right on the busy Great North Road.
The Rating and Valuation Act 1925 specified that every building and piece of land in the country was to be assessed as to its rateable value. Chawston was assessed in 1927. The valuer visiting Thatch Cottage [DV1/C197/131] found it owned and occupied by C. Ruff.
The cottage comprised a living room and kitchen with two bedrooms above. Outside lay a brick and tiled three bay hovel with a loft over, brick, weather-boarded and tiled pig pens and fowl sheds as well as a mixing and tool shed and an open hovel.