West End Farmhouse, including connected dairy outbuilding and boundary wall, Launton, Oxfordshire

Summary

Farmhouse, probably converted from two cottages dating to the early or mid-C18.

Description

Farmhouse, probably converted from two cottages dating to the early or mid-C18.

MATERIALS: coursed limestone rubble with wooden lintels, plain brown tiles to the roof with brick gable stacks, the caps rebuilt with modern red bricks.

PLAN: two-bay plan, with two storeys and attic. There are two principal rooms to the ground floor of the main body of the house, divided by a central entrance hall with stairs. An additional western room, eastern kitchen and central WC occupy the mid-C19 extension to the rear (north). The upper floor has a corridor at the top of the stairs connecting the rooms to the east and west ends, with a small room in the centre above the entrance hall and an inserted bathroom to the north-west corner. Historically, the building was two separate cottages, though has been unified since the mid-C20, with later alterations of the 1980s obscuring this historic central partition.

EXTERIOR: the façade to West End has a three-window front with the doorway to right of centre. There are two-light casements in the outer bays on the ground and first floors, and an additional casement to the right of the doorway, replacing an earlier entrance here. There is a faint trace in the rubblestone coursing of what may have been a front door to the western cottage, potentially infilled prior to the 1950s. The gable ends to the east and west are blank, save for one small inserted 1980s casement on the west side of the ground floor. The lean-to extension to the north has a later-added door at the east end, with three small casements. The original entry to the outshut on the western end of the lean-to is evident in the faint trace of an outline in the rubblestone coursing. There are central chimney stacks to both gable ends, the caps having been been rebuilt with later-C20 brick. The western stack has a pair of shafts, linked at the cap.

INTERIOR: there are heavy chamfered beams to both ground-floor rooms to the main range, with two large hearths to the gable ends, the hearth to the north-east is blocked and to the south-west there is a late-C20 inserted fireplace. There is a central entrance dividing the rooms, leading to a straight flight of stairs, added in the 1980s in place of the two sets of stairs to the sides of the end stacks. The positions of the historic stairs are confirmed by replacement floorboards in the first-floor rooms; these being to the south of the stack in the west room and to the north in the east room. Above the new, central stairs is a partially concealed cross beam, with a sawn-off spine beam with chamfered edges running through from the western room connecting to this, likely indicating the position of the historic central partition of the formerly distinct cottages. There are two blocked windows to the north elevation, seen within the roof void to of the lean-to, with the blocked eastern window also visible from the east bedroom. A third window opening was likely in the position of the door now present to access the roof void.

The roof is of clasped purlin construction, with three trusses with collar ties. There has been alteration and reworking of the structure, with reused timbers with open mortice sockets to several purlins and many replaced, machine-cut rafters evident. A waterproof membrane sheet has been laid on top of the rafters, meaning the roof has had tiles re-laid at some stage, probably in the 1980s. Within the attic space, the stack is of rubble stone to the west side and a narrow, slanted stack of red brick (of probable pre-1850 date owing to the irregular bricks) is set to the east.

SUBSIDIARY FEATURES: a square-plan dairy outbuilding is adjacent to the house to the north, connected by a link block added by 1922. The dairy building appears to date to the late C19 or early C20, built of banded red and yellow brick. Internally, there are square quarry tiles to the floor and machine-sawn roof timbers. A rubble limestone boundary wall with No. 54 runs to the north side of the house, in line with the eastern gable-end of the house.

This list entry was subject to a Minor Amendment on 8 June 2023 to amend the description.

History

West End Farmhouse is likely to date from the early or mid-C18, probably originally built as a pair of farm cottages associated with the narrow furlong small holdings, which ran back to the north-west from West End. The adjacent plot to the east is identified on the Launton acreage plan of 1607 as belonging to John Freeman; this land associated with Freeman House, which remains at 54 West End and is recorded as dating to 1697 (Grade II; List entry 1232917). The location of Freeman’s plot on the 1607 plan makes it likely that the present West End Farm site occupied two strips of land to the west, recorded as being in the ownership of a Mr Tomson and Mr Duke at this time. Scattered, informal development of buildings along the north side of West End is recorded on the R Davies New Map of the County of Oxfordshire of 1793-1794, although the schematic form of the map makes any identification of specific buildings here unreliable. From the evidence of retained historic building fabric, it is clear that the cottages were originally a single room deep, with the northern lean-to extension added to provide additional rooms at ground-floor level. This had been constructed by the time of the first Ordnance Survey (OS) 1:2500 map of 1881, which shows the present depth of the building and also records the West End Farm cottages as being divided centrally. The northern outbuilding, built as a dairy, is shown on the 1910 land survey plan of Launton and the connecting pantry block is outlined on the 1:2500 OS revision of 1922.

The two cottages had been unified by the 1950s, from the recollections of the previous owners. This is confirmed in the 1968 OS revision, which records the building as ‘West End Farmhouse’. Two staircases to the gable ends (alongside the stacks) were retained in the unified house until the 1980s, when both were removed and replaced with a central stair, this cutting into both rooms and introducing a new central front entrance and internal partitions to create the entrance hall. This work involved introducing new internal doors and replacing the front door, which had been off-set to the right, with an additional ground-floor casement window (noted at the time of listing in 1987). There was also some associated alteration of the first-floor arrangement, which introduced a connecting corridor between the east and west rooms, replaced the historic partition wall with new partitions at this level, and changed the doors and their positions. Other changes which appear to date to the 1980s include the conversion of what was a feed store in the western part of the outshut to an additional study room (with the corresponding blocking of the external door here to the rear yard and the creation of an opening from the western front room), along with the introduction of small rooflights to the rear pitch, rebuilding of the upper parts of the chimneys, the insertion of a new ground-floor window to the western gable end, the creation of an upstairs bathroom to the north-west corner, and the laying of a concrete floor throughout the ground floor. The farmland to the north formerly associated with the house was sold-off for housing in around 1983.

Reasons for Listing

West End Farmhouse, 56 West End, Launton, Oxfordshire is listed at Grade II for the following principal reasons:

Architectural interest:

* for the survival of a significant proportion of the structure dating to the early or mid-C18, including most of the coursed rubblestone walling, timber lintels and some elements of the internal timber frame and the clasped purlin roof structure.

Historic interest:

* as a formerly subdivided pair of farmstead cottages, demonstrating vernacular building traditions as applied to modest dwellings of the first half of the C18 in this part of the country.

Group value:

* with other Grade II-listed buildings along West End, including Freeman House (List entry 1232917) and the (former) Black Bull Public House (List entry 1232916), immediately to the north-east, and Old Timbers (List entry 123920), to the south-west.

External Links

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