The Monday Photo

Happy New Year to all my readers!

Now on with the post…

This pair of timber framed cottages are on a side road which used to be the main road through Simpson village.

It used to be the road between Newport Pagnell and Fenny Stratford, which was diverted when a Milton Keynes grid road put an enbankment over the original route.

These cottages were built in the 17th Century but have since been refronted; the nearest cottage in the 19th Century, the furthest one in the 18th Century.

The bricks on the front of the closest cottage are greater in height than the ones in the far one; bricks have varied in shape over the centuries so this can be a good clue to the age of a wall, though not in this case to the age of the building.

Refronting was the modernisation of the times, though you can see here that the nearest cottage didn’t continue the work around to the gable end; it makes it obvious that the place has been refronted. The furthest cottage, it seems, did; no timber framework is visible in its gable end wall.

The thatched barn in the background is typical of the many barns that used to be in Buckinghamshire with its black painted weatherboarding.

Many of them were not thatched when I was a kid growing up in the 1960s and poking my nose into barns, but were roofed with corrugated iron, often painted black.

Like the cottages it is also timber framed and a listed building. You can find details of listed buildings in England online, and see for yourself what’s listed where you are. At the link, Buckinghamshire and Milton Keynes are both listed under “South East”.