The cottager’s house belongs to the smallest peasant’s homesteads in the region. The owners did not possess any farmland and for this reason, the house was built in the middle of the village green, on the village grounds. The farming functions were restricted and the house served mainly for living, sleeping and food preparation. The owners worked as labourers on local farms. They got their wages in foods and kind: potatoes, corn, a small piece of land for own cultivation. In one case, the home production of wooden agricultural tools, such as rakes, scathe handles and wheelbarrows are documented. The local cottagers were famous for these goods, supplying the wide environs and distant fairs with them.
The house occupiers came from the Matějík family. In 1900, Martin Matějík (1861) with his wife Anna and three daughters – Alžběta, Rozina and Anna, lived in the house together with the retired woman Alžběta Matějíková. Except two younger girls, all of them earned their livelihood as labourers. As such, they had only one hen and one goose. Since 1910, the family of Tomáš Matějík (1856) lived in the house. Taking into account the date of birth, Tomáš was probably Martin’s older brother. The household was not big –Tomáš, his wife Majdaléna and their grown-up son Tomáš. All of them also made their living as labourers, father Tomáš made wooden tools.
The gable-oriented house is situated on the left side of a small lot, along the road passing through the village green. The lot was the village property and it had no other farmland except the small yard. The lacking farming functions were reflected in limited house rooms consisting only of a habitable room and a hall with an open-heath kitchen. A small store room and a shed with a pigsty were built much later.
The walls are built of unburnt bricks on the stone fender wall. The ceilings are provided with beams and boards with an insulating layer of clay on them. The hip roof is covered with thatches in the form of steps in the corners. The outside walls are plastered and painted with whitewash with colour bottom strip.
The house is entered through a large square hall. The not fully separated open-hearth kitchen is located under the larger chimney at the room wall. The foodstuffs were prepared on the open firepit built on a low stone panel carried by two beams. The hole in the open-hearth kitchen wall was intended to heat-up the bread oven and the tiled stove in the adjoined room. Combination of these three elements is the basis for the older stage of the heating system. This was changed as late as in the 1930s. The tiled stove was dismantled and replaced by a blue tiled kitchen-stove with castiron cooktop and oven. The furnishing was completed with a table placed between the windows, and bent chairs.
