Powder Mill Cottage, Winford, North Somerset

Entry Name: Powder Mill Cottage

Listing Date: 13 December 2001

Grade: II

Source: Historic England

Source ID: 1389623

English Heritage Legacy ID: 488311

ID on this website: 101389623

Location: Upper Littleton, North Somerset, BS40

County: North Somerset

Civil Parish: Winford

Built-Up Area: Winford

Traditional County: Somerset

Lieutenancy Area (Ceremonial County): Somerset

Tagged with: Cottage

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Description

ST 56 SE
1816/7/10025
13-DEC-01

WINFORD
LITTLETON LANE
Powder Mill Cottage

GV
II

Probable former cooperage and cottage on gunpowder mill, now house. Mid C18, re-roofed mid C20. Uncoursed limestone rubble, tall, thin quoins and dressings to the right 2-window section, brick gable and ridge stacks, and concrete tile roof.

PLAN: Single-depth plan with chimneys at both ends of long left-hand section, and to shorter section to right. Built across N gable of Powdermill Farmhouse (qv).

EXTERIOR: 2 storey; eight-window range, with wooden lintels to closely-spaced windows with mid-C20 casements, first-floor wall-plate lintels, and glazed doors to entrances second from left and between third and fourth windows from right. Right gable has a large exterior stack on a rubble base with a late-C20 inserted doorway to the left.

INTERIOR: Long E ground-floor room has a large fireplace in E end under a chamfered beam with an oven to the right, a smaller stack at opposite end faced with later brick, heavy chamfered beams, some with filled joist holes, and later small-scantling joists. Small heated end room, the rear wall contains a shallow arched recess. Upper floor has mid-C20 room divisions.

HISTORY: Littleton gunpowder mill operated for about a century from the early C18. It was one of three in Somerset which were started to supply local mining interests and also foreign markets through the port of Bristol, and all of which closed by the mid-C19. It is the best surviving gunpowder works from this period in the country.

Cooperages were a central part of a gunpowder works. The open layout suggests this is not a domestic building, and the close fenestration is similar to cooperages elsewhere, notably at Powdermill Farm at Postbridge (qv), on Dartmoor in Devon. The slightly different right-hand section was probably been built as a dwelling.

(Buchanan, B and Tucker, MT, 'The Manufacture of Gunpowder', Industrial Archaeology Review, V. 3. 1981; Crocker, G, The Gunpowder Mills Gazetteer, 1988; Former Avon County SMR entry 2190; Gilson R G, Unpublished VAG Report, September 1979)

External Links

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