Dapdune Farm Cottage, including attached outbuildings, and yard wall, Guildford, Surrey

Summary

This farm cottage, with attached outbuildings and a partially surviving yard wall, was built c1835 as part of a planned farmstead known as Dapdune Farm, situated on the River Wey.

Description

Farm cottage and attached outbuildings and yard wall, built c1835 as part of a planned farmstead.

MATERIALS: the buildings are constructed of local Bargate stone with yellow brick dressings and chimney pots. The roofs are covered in clay tiles and windows and doors are timber.

PLAN: Dapdune Farm Cottage is rectangular in plan with a pitched roof, and runs broadly north-south. Originally linked to the farmhouse opposite by a shallow U-shaped range, over half this linking range has been demolished, leaving a surviving section to the north of the cottage. The farm’s yard, originally enclosed on three sides by the buildings, had by 1870 been split in two between the cottage and the farmhouse. Most of the stone wall which enclosed the cottage yard survives, albeit in a poor state of repair.

The cottage has an unaltered plan form; it is three rooms wide and one room deep. It is entered from the east, between the two southerly rooms, into a small lobby with a straight flight of stairs ahead, running the depth of the building. Rooms lead off from either side of the stair at ground and first floors, with a short hallway to the north at first floor. At ground floor the kitchen is at the north end, and this is accessed via the middle room but also has its own external door from the yard. Externally the doors and windows are arranged irregularly across the east elevation, but are neatly ordered into three bays to the west. The building has two ridge stacks, one with a cluster of four pots, the other with two.

Attached to the north end of the cottage is an L-shaped range of single-storey farm buildings accessed from the yard. These comprise two enclosed rooms, one of which is believed to have been used as a dairy or cow shed, and what was originally an open-fronted store, probably for carts or stabling.

EXTERIOR: built of stone with brick dressings, the cottage has a proportionately long, narrow, footprint, its wide east elevation facing the yard. To the south the roof projects over the gable wall face and has a shaped timber bargeboard. Beneath, is an arched first-floor window with Gothic style timber tracery. The chimney stacks are of stone above the roof, but terminate in clusters of tall octagonal yellow brick pots.

There is an irregular pattern of fenestration to the east, but a more regular pattern to the west, where it faces onto the River Wey. This west elevation also has flint galetting. The original timber casement windows with glazing bars survive, as do the original doors in the east elevation. The main door has four panels with button beading and an iron knocker, and the kitchen door is of plank construction; the distinction reflecting the hierarchy of the two entrances.

The west and north elevations of the outbuildings share the more decorative elements of the cottage, with galetted stone walls and shaped bargeboard around a gable verge to the north. As with the cottage there is an arched window opening in the gable end, but here the window has been replaced. Facing east and south, into the yard, the farm buildings are largely timber-framed. The short section to the north of the cottage is part stone-built, part timber clad in wany-edge board, and has two doorways. The range which runs east-west appears to have been originally open-fronted; the openings now in-filled with concrete block.

INTERIOR: the cottage is very little altered internally. Clearly always a modest building, the simple joinery of the stairs, internal four-panel and plank doors, architraves, and some built-in cupboards, survive. Part of the stair enclosure, and the first-floor partition wall between the hall and central bedroom, is of studwork, clad in vertical timber boarding. The fireplaces all remain open, some with original simple timber surrounds, although they have generally lost their iron inserts, and one downstairs has had a c1930 tiled surround added. The kitchen at the north end of the building has painted but un-plastered walls.

The east-west farm building range is open to the roof, and has simple queen-post trusses. The walls are painted but un-plastered. The short section of farm building to the north of the cottage was not inspected internally.

History

Dapdune Farm Cottage, with its attached outbuildings, was built c1835 by William Sparkes as part of a small farmstead. The buildings are located next to the River Wey, one of the first British rivers to be made navigable, and which opened to barge traffic in 1653. The Wey Navigation, as it is called, links Guildford to the Thames at Weybridge. Dapdune Wharf, to the immediate north of the farm, is one of a number of historic wharfs along the navigation, and was used particularly for the loading of timber until the late C18. At the time of the farm's construction it was situated in open countryside a short distance to the north of Guildford.
William Sparkes was a banker and several-time mayor of Guildford who died in 1840. He held estates in Surrey, Sussex and Middlesex, and appears to have acquired the land on which the farm was built in 1833. His estates were eventually sold in 1845, with Dapdune Farm being bought at this time by John Smallpiece. The original farmstead comprised two adjoining L-shaped ranges – the cottage and the outbuildings forming part of the westernmost one. Only the easternmost range is shown on a tithe map of 1835, but by the time of the sale to Smallpeice in 1845, both ranges are mapped, so assuming the second range was built before Sparkes died, the farmstead must have been complete by 1840.

By 1870 the Ordnance Survey map shows that the easternmost range of the farm had been truncated, leaving the farm as a U-shaped complex, comprised of two north-south ranges, connected by an east-west range to the north. In the late C19/early C20 the farm was sold to the Stevens family, who had worked on the navigation from the early C19. By the early C20 the family firm of William Stevens and Sons had a monopoly on the barges operating on the navigation and had taken full ownership of the waterway. The farm was leased by the Stevens family to Benjamin Heath – a carman and haulage contractor - and it is believed that the farm was used to store carts and stable cart horses. Street directories and census returns identify a number of individuals and families who occupied either the cottage or farmhouse at various times during the early C20. Family names include that of Edwards - barge-builders for William Stevens and Sons at Dapdune Wharf - and Harding, who were carters. Heath's business was bought by the Stevens family in the 1950s and eventually wound down in the 1970s, the buildings given over to other commercial uses.

The building known as Dapdune Farmhouse – part of the original c1835 farm, which is situated to the east of Dapdune Farm Cottage – is not included in the listing as it has been so altered.

Reasons for Listing

Dapdune Farm Cottage, including attached outbuildings, and yard walls, built c1835 as part of a small farmstead, is listed at Grade II for the following principal reasons:

* Architectural interest: materials and details are successfully combined to picturesque effect, reflective of contemporary architectural fashions for this type of rural building;
* External treatment: both the cottage and its outbuildings are more decorative on their Wey Navigation-facing elevations, a conscious design feature such that a fair face was presented to this busy and important transportation route;
* Historic interest: in an area now surrounded by later urban development, the buildings, together with the Wey Navigation and Dapdune Wharf, are an evocative survival of this once rural, but semi-indurstial, enclave;
* Level of survival: the cottage and outbuildings survive with little alteration, and in this are particularly resonant of their historic use and status.

External Links

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