Building record BAT 018 - Outbuilding at The Olde Bungalow

The Olde Bungalow is a late-18th century thatched cottage which lies on an evocative remnant of the medieval green known as Battisford Tye. A map of 1812, drawn up when most the tye was enclosed to form gardens and farmland, shows the cottage alongside a large horse pond in the middle of the green with a small outbuilding to the north, and the site was described as a ‘blacksmith’s shop and house’ by the tithe survey of 1842. The smithy may have been built as part of the enclosure process, but the buildings do not respect the new highways and they may well reflect a far more ancient arrangement. The pond had been drained by 1842 but the smithy occupied the same site until the beginning of the 20th century when it was demolished and replaced by the existing outbuilding a few metres further south (on the site of the pond). The present outbuilding is a single storied pantiled shed of post-and-rail construction with external cladding of nailed vertical boards with raised fillets covering their joints. It is divided into two compartments with a contemporary rear lean-to, and retains a number of original windows with overlapping panes of irregular size that were an inexpensive by-product of the glass manufacturing process. The larger of the two compartments retains a brick forge and was evidently a smithy, its walls lined with nail-hooks from which the smith’s tools would have hung, while the smaller shed is understood to have been a carpenter’s shop. The site belonged to a local builder until recent years. The building represents an increasingly rare example of an early-20th century vernacular workshop. Utilitarian industrial and commercial sheds such as this were once common, but few survived the economic and technological changes of the 20th century. Despite its historic and social interest the building is not of sufficient age or completeness to meet the strict English Heritage criteria for listing (S1).