April Cottage
For people who care about old buildings, this cottage near the bottom of Mill Lane is one of the gems of Shoreham. It’s an almost complete late-medieval hall house from about 1500, but on a smaller scale than many. Originally, its open central hall – extending upwards into the low roof – covered only one “bay”, a squarish area about 12 feet wide. We know there would have been an open fire in the early days from the smoke-blackened roof timbers. |
To make extra space, an “aisle” was built along the back, which survives as a rare example of this lean-to structure. On the side of the house by the river there would have been a ground-floor parlour and an upstairs chamber, with two floors of service rooms on the other side of the hall. Remnants of the large hall window (now blocked in) survive from the age before window glass, and the original front door with its carved wooden frame-head is also still in place.
The doorway can be seen in a picture by Shoreham artist Harold Copping, famous for his religion-themed images in the early 20th century. The work shows Mercy and Timorous, characters from a successful edition of The Pilgrim’s Progress that Copping illustrated. Two Shoreham residents, Emily and Sarah Cassam, were used as models. The front door opens on to a passage through to the back, just as in the early days. A brick and ragstone chimney was constructed in the late 16th or early 17th century, when the central hall would probably have been divided into two floors. By the end of the 18th century the cottage was extended further up the hill and became more than one dwelling. |
In the heyday of the Shoreham paper mill in the 19th and early 20th century, it’s thought that rags were stored in April Cottage for making the paper just a short distance away at the foot of the lane. An old photo shows the row of cottages in an unpromising state of repair in this era. It’s said that one of them went on sale for £80 during the Second World War. |
Text by James Saynor