Site Event/Activity record ECH4285 - The Old Smithy, Cuddington Green, Cheshire; a Level 2 Architectural Survey.

The Old Smithy is a multi-phase building with each of its four bays representing a different structural episodeand with additional alterations occuring within the individual bays. The earliest part of the building is the timber-framed Bay 2, which seems to date to the first half of the eighteenth century. In the late eighteenth or early nineteenth century Bay 3 is likely to have been constructed and the roof height of Bay 2 raised. The so-called inglenook fireplace in Bay 3 is not really wide enough or deep enough to be considered a proper inglenook, and instead may be the position of the hearth associated with smithing, from which the building undoubtedly derives its name. Bay 1, a shippon on the west of the building, would probably have housed one or two animals with a hay-loft above. Bay 4 would have been built in the late nineteenth or early twentieth century. The wide doorway which formerly existed in the south wall of this bay would sugest a non-domestic function possibly associated with the smithy.