More information : 10 Castlegate is situated in the historic core of Castle Bytham near to the substantial earthwork remains of the Norman castle from which the village derived its name. The cottage appears to date from the 17th century and to have been extended around the turn of the 19th century. The two rooms at the front of the house constitute the original two unit cottage to which the rear kitchen and pantry (now an office) was added circa 1800. The attached single-storey workshop was erected at some point between these two main building phases. From the 1920s it was used as a carpenter's workshop and it is now used as a joinery workshop. There have been a number of later alterations to the cottage. The original 17th century entrance has been blocked, and the new entrance relocated to the south-east corner of the rear wing has a projecting porch of recent construction. In the early 1980s a considerable part of the roof fell in requiring the tiling and many of the rafters to be replaced. The windows on the ground-floor have been replaced, and those in the attic have been replaced at least once. The eastern gable of the workshop has been rebuilt in recent years and a door on the front elevation has been inserted. The footprint of the building has not changed from that depicted on the 1888 Ordnance Survey map.
The cottage is constructed of coursed limestone rubble and has a steeply pitched roof covered with clay pantiles. It is single-storey with an attic, a rear-wing extension, and a single-storey workshop adjoining the eastern gable. The principal elevation of the cottage has two timber casement windows on the ground-floor and a small fire window on the eastern side, all with timber lintels. There are two, tiled dormers directly above the ground-floor windows with timber casements and pitched gables decorated with bargeboards. The entrance door is in the south-east corner of the rear wing under a projecting, tiled porch. On the east wall of the extension there is a ground-floor timber casement window and a gabled dormer rising through the eaves. On the north wall there is a small, stone and tiled projection which housed the oven. The front elevation of the workshop has a long, horizontal window with five, timber mullions and lintel, and a modern timber doorway to its right with four panes in the top half. To the rear it has a pair of large, timber doors. There are a number of outbuildings in the garden, either of stone with pantiled roof, or corrugated iron.
Internally, the domestic accommodation on the ground-floor is comprised of two rooms at the front of the house which would have constituted the original cottage; and the kitchen and pantry (now used as an office) to the rear which were added around the turn of the 19th century. The wall between the east room and kitchen has a splayed recess which suggests that it was originally a window on the exterior wall. The east sitting room has an inglenook and a chamfered and stopped bressumer. The cupboard on the south side of the inglenook has an opening in the ceiling from which the stone smoke hood is visible. The closed straight stair leads up from the area between the kitchen and pantry. The cottage has a common rafter roof with pegged joints: a large number of the rafters are replacements. The workshop has an exposed timber and lath roof structure.
10 Castlegate, a cottage and attached workshop with 17th century origins, Castle Bytham, is not recommended for listing for the following principal reasons:
* Architectural interest: the cottage is of modest architectural interest. Although it retains some evidence of earlier vernacular building traditions, these have been compromised by successive phases of change
* Alterations: the building has suffered successive changes, notably to the roof structure, door and window openings
* Survival: a significant proportion of the original fabric no longer survives (1)
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