Most of the bespoke joinery we make for Cockington is replacement work, and that changes the job. A cottage built of cob around the forge and the crossroads on Totnes Road can be three hundred years old, and its doors and windows have been patched, rehung and painted more times than anyone has recorded. Almost every building in the village centre is listed. So the question is rarely what you would like. It is what was there, what the conservation officer will accept, and how to make a new piece that sits in a wall which is thicker at the bottom than the top. We measure the opening, record the old ironmongery and copy the glazing pattern, then make it in our Barton workshop.
Tell us roughly what you have in mind and we will arrange a time to come and measure. A photo of the space on your phone is usually enough to start with.
The Joiner Behind It
Cockington's cob cottages have doors and windows that have been patched and rehung for generations. Replacing one well starts with respecting how it was first made.
Luke grew up with joinery. It runs in his family, and he has done it since childhood. A lot of what suits these cottages can't be learned in a classroom, and Luke didn't learn it in one. The team follows his lead.
About Cockington
Cockington appears in Domesday, and from the twelfth century until 1932 it passed through just three families: the Fitzmartins, the Carys and then the Mallocks, who bought it in 1654. That long ownership is why the village looks the way it does. Nobody was allowed to knock it about. When the Mallocks sold up, a trust bought the village and asked Sir Edwin Lutyens to draw a model village of twenty thatched, limewashed buildings. War stopped it, and the only one built was the Drum Inn. Most of the valley and every estate building in it became a conservation area in December 1970, and the Torbay Coast and Countryside Trust now looks after the Court and the village estate.
The buildings are cob, local red sandstone or both, with Devon wheat reed on the roofs nearest the crossroads. The council's own appraisal of the village counts around forty listed buildings and structures. It also notes the joinery: older cottage doors made from broad vertical oak planks held by horizontal battens, later ones ledged and braced, and windows that are mostly casements hung in pairs, sometimes in threes, with six or eight panes. It also names what is starting to spoil things, dark stained window frames among them. Local red sandstone is in short supply, and the appraisal mentions a stone store set up at the Court so repairs can use the right stone. That is a fairly exact brief for anyone making a replacement door or window here.
Services In Cockington
Nobody in the village needs a showroom kitchen squeezed under a thatch. What comes up again and again is the fabric of the cottage itself, and then making a small, crooked interior work harder without pretending it is square.
Paired casements with narrow glazing bars and plank doors on hand-forged hinges. We copy the bar section and the pane count from what survives, and paint rather than stain, which is what the village appraisal asks for.
Read more about Timber Windows & Doors
Freestanding dressers, settles and cupboards suit a cob room better than anything fixed to the wall. A piece that stands on its own feet can be shimmed level on an uneven flagstone or board floor, and it leaves the old wall alone.
Read more about Bespoke Furniture
Cottage bedrooms under a thatch lose height fast towards the eaves. We build wardrobes and cupboards that step down with the ceiling, fixed into timber grounds rather than straight into the cob, and painted to sit quietly in a whitewashed room.
Read more about Fitted WardrobesWhy It Matters Here
Cob crumbles around a plug and does not hold a screw the way brick does. We fix to timber grounds, lintels or the floor, and keep the load on the joinery itself so nothing is hanging off an earth wall that was never designed to carry it.
Six-pane and eight-pane casements with thin bars are part of what the conservation area protects. We take a section off a surviving bar, or a careful tracing, and run cutters to match it rather than reaching for a stock moulding.
The appraisal warns that impermeable coatings trap moisture in rendered and cob walls. Our finishes for frames and reveals are chosen with that in mind, and we will tell you if a plastic paint on the surrounding wall is going to cause trouble.
Wide oak boards on horizontal battens for the older cottages, ledged and braced for later ones. Boards are tongued and grooved with room to move, so the door does not split itself apart the first dry summer after it is hung.
Strap hinges, thumb latches and wrought pintles are often in better shape than the timber they hang. We clean them, refit them to the new door and only make up replacements where the originals have rusted through.
Listed building consent needs drawings that show exactly what is coming out and what is going in. We produce elevations and sections at a scale the conservation team can read, and we keep the old door until consent is granted.
From The Workshop
This is one of our joiners at the bench in the workshop, finishing a part with an orbital sander, with hand tools hung on the board behind him. It is not a Cockington job and we would not pretend it was. It is the stage that every cottage door or casement goes through before it leaves Barton, sanded between coats so the paint lies flat over the grain.
For homes in Cockington, most of the work happens here rather than on site. A pair of casements can be made, primed and glazed in the workshop, then fitted in a day, which matters when the lane outside is full of visitors and there is nowhere to park a van for long. It also means the cottage is open to the weather for hours rather than days, which a thatch and a cob wall both appreciate.
Reassurance
Our Process
The usual seven stages, with one extra job added at the very start for a cottage in Cockington: checking what consent the work needs, and from whom, before a single board is cut.
We look at the door or window and at the wall around it. In a cob cottage that means finding where the timber lintel sits, whether the reveal has been rendered in cement, and how far the opening leans. We photograph the hinges and latch, trace the glazing bars and note the paint layers. If the cottage is listed, we tell you then what a consent application will need from us.
You get a drawn elevation and a plan, with real dimensions on them, before anything is priced as final. Door swings, drawer positions, where the sockets end up. It is much cheaper to move a shelf on paper than after it has been cut.
We agree the species and the grade, and where it matters we pick the actual boards. Oak with heavy medullary rays looks completely different from quarter-sawn stock. The quote names the timber, the finish and the ironmongery, so you are comparing like with like against anyone else you ask.
The timber sits in the workshop and settles towards the moisture content it will live at. BS EN 942 puts joinery for a house heated to between 12 and 21 degrees at 9 to 13 per cent. Skip this and the piece will do its moving after it is installed, in your hallway, rather than on our racks.
Cut, moulded and jointed, then dry-assembled on the bench so we find out about any problem while it is still in our building. Carcasses go together, doors are hung, drawers are fitted and adjusted. Nothing is finished until it has been put together at least once.
Sprayed, oiled or hand-painted in the workshop, including the backs and the edges you will never see. Sealing five faces and leaving the sixth bare is how a panel takes up moisture unevenly and bows. Finishing off site also means no spray dust through your house.
Fitting in the village is done by hand and slowly. New frames are bedded on lime rather than expanding foam, gaps are packed and pointed, and doors are planed to the floor as it actually runs. We refit the original latch and hinges where we can. Then we come back once the cottage has had a winter, because cob and green oak both move in their first year together.
Local
You can spend a whole day in the valley without leaving it. These are the three places we would send anyone visiting the village for the first time.
The manor house of the Carys and then the Mallocks, listed at grade II* and open to the public since 1991. It now holds craft studios, a gallery and a tea room, with a walled rose garden behind it. The parish church of St George and St Mary sits on the lawn just beyond.
Learn more about Cockington Court on Google Maps
Around 450 acres of parkland, woods and fields run up the valley behind the Court, cared for by the Torbay Coast and Countryside Trust. The path past the three ornamental lakes is the gentle walk, and it carries on into the woods if you want something longer.
Learn more about Cockington Country Park and lakes on Google Maps
The single building finished from the Lutyens plan for a new model village in the 1930s. It has a low thatched roof, tapering red brick chimneys and sliding sash windows, and the brick steps in its garden are part of his original design. Even the oak inn sign post is listed.
Learn more about The Drum Inn on Google MapsFeedback
Rated 5 out of 5
“Our bedroom is in one of the old Warberries villas and the back wall bows by about an inch and a half across four metres. Two national firms measured it, quoted, then went quiet. These came, measured, and said it needed scribing rather than filling. The wardrobes go right into the corner and there is no gap anywhere. My husband keeps running his hand down the join.”
Rated 5 out of 5
“We run a bar on the harbourside and needed the counter and back fittings replaced without losing a summer weekend. They built the lot off site, came in on a Sunday night and had us trading by Tuesday lunchtime. Knowing the whole thing was made before they ever shut our doors is what sold it.”
Rated 5 out of 5
“Sash windows on the front elevation, and we are in a conservation area so it had to be timber and it had to match. They took a profile off the original, made new boxes in accoya, and the planning side went through without a query. From the pavement you genuinely cannot tell which is which.”
Rated 5 out of 5
“Two alcoves either side of the chimney, and they turned out to be 40mm different in width, which explains why the flat-pack ones we tried first never sat right. Made as a pair but to two different sets of measurements. Small thing, but it is the difference between looking fitted and looking bought.”
Rated 5 out of 5
“We let our place out over the season so everything gets hammered. I asked them to over-specify the drawer runners and they did, and told me exactly which ones so I can order spares. Three summers in, nothing has sagged. The last kitchen we had did not last two.”
Budget
A Cockington job usually costs more per piece than the same thing in a newer street, and it is mostly time rather than materials. Copying a glazing bar profile, cutting a door to an opening that is out of true in two directions and fitting it on lime all take longer. Consent adds a stage too, because nothing is fitted until the drawings are approved. Parking a van near the crossroads in summer is slow, so we plan deliveries early. Our post on joinery for listed and conservation area homes covers what drives the figure.
Guide ranges only, VAT included. Your figure comes from the measured visit and the drawing you sign off.
What moves the priceQuestions
Coverage
Most of our work sits inside Torbay, because fitted joinery needs at least two visits and often three. Further out we go as far as the drive stays sensible - Newton Abbot and Totnes are routine, and we have taken work down to the South Hams when the job justified it.
Send us a photograph of the door or window and a rough size. We will tell you whether it can be repaired, what consent it is likely to need, and when we could come out to the village to measure it properly.
