Cottage Doors & Cottage Composite Doors

or a row of well maintained properties, the Country Cottage rightfully has a place in Britain’s heritage.

The Cottage as frequently shown chocolate box lids and Jig saws is the image we have come to know and love but it was not always this way the Cottage has much humbler origins as the traditional home of those who for generations worked the land; the original cottages were indeed very “rustic” buildings.

One of the key features of any cottage is the front door and the styles available have changed dramatically through time. Today, the choice of doors available for sale is vast and if anyone of those styles is installed in a Cottage it can rightfully be called a Cottage Door, this does not however take any account of the historical development of the Cottage door.

The earliest Cottage doors were of very simple construction designed to keep out the worst of the weather rather than to be pleasing in appearance.

Ledged and Braced doors – a form of construction comprising simply vertical boarding reinforced with horizontal members on the inner face (ledgers) normally hand worked in Oak roughly cut to fit the size of the door opening. These doors were refined over the years to become the ledged and braced doors which we now are more likely to associate with Barn doors or Garden gates, there are however many examples of ledged and braced doors being used both in older properties and new Barn Conversions, the difference being that the modern doors are however more likely to be mass produced rather than the hand crafted

Pictures of old and new ledged and braced doors

www.watercolour.tv /art-gallery/landscapes/cottage-door-ashford-derbyshire

The Stable Door- was one of the earliest changes made to the ledged and braced door and this  was to split it horizontally approximately mid height and introduce additional hinges so that top and bottom halves of the door could operate independently as illustrated in Henry Bright 1864 painting “the Cottage Door” see www.bbc.co.uk/arts/yourpaintings/paintings/the-cottage–door-8228