Churchend Cottage Kensworth

Churchend Cottage about 1910 [Z883/29]

Church End Cottage was listed by the former Ministry of Public Buildings and Works in February 1967 as Grade Ii, of special interest. It dates from the 18th century and is built of grey brick with red brick dressings. The house comprises two storeys beneath an old clay tiled roof.

Directories for Bedfordshire were not published every year but every few years from the early to mid 19th century until 1940. The first time Kensworth appears in a Bedfordshire directory is 1898 as the parish was in Hertfordshire until 1897. Church End Cottage is listed in directories of 1898, 1903 and 1906 as being in the occupation of Rev. William Brian Somerville Litle, the Vicar from 1893 to 1926. By the time of the directory of 1910 he had moved to the Vicarage which, hitherto, had still been occupied by Litle’s predecessor as vicar, George Edward Oscar Watts.

The Rating and Valuation Act 1925 specified that every building and piece of land in the country was to be assessed to determine its rateable value. Kensworth, like most of the county, was largely assessed in 1927. The valuer visiting Churchend Cottage [DV1/C114/19] found it owned by P. T. Fossey and inhabited by a man named Hughes, whose rent is not recorded.

Accommodation was not recorded because “No one in” – a common problem in Kensworth. The external buildings comprised a brick and slate two stall stable, a brick and slate barn, a brick and slate barn “used as store shed”, a brick, weather-boarded and tiled timber shed, a brick and tile earth closet, a weather-boarded and tiled well house and a weather-boarded and tiled barn (“neglect”). The property stood in just under half an acre and included an orchard extending over 1.493 acres.

Churchend Cottage March 2012