Summary

A vernacular barn of C18 origin, built of watershot buff sandstone with stone flag roofs. Built as a combination threshing barn and shippon, with opposed cart entries and manure passage doors. Extended to the W in the C19 and converted for stabling in the C20 with a rear extension.

Description

Barn of the C18, with C19 and C20 alterations.

MATERIALS: buff sandstone and some brick with stone flag roofs.

PLAN: three-bay threshing barn (including shippon-outshut to the W), extended to the W and rear.

EXTERIOR: attached to Brookhouse farmhouse and cottage, situated on the S side of Holcombe road as it rises to the N of Brookhouse bridge. The front (N) elevation is partially obscured at the left by the cottage. This elevation has a large cart entrance left-of-centre with boarding above the timber doors. To the right of the cart entrance there is a straight vertical joint up to c.1m, with larger-coursed stone to the right of this. To the right are a door, partially blocked to form a window, and another ground-floor window, with a large circular pitching eye at eaves level between the two. There are irregularly-spaced square vent holes. The right return is blank and constructed of squared, watershot stone. The gable is asymmetrical with the ridge left-of-centre and lower eaves to the right. A stub brick wall indicates where a westward extension has been removed, and a scar marks a former low gable in the centre of the wall. The rear elevation is divided into three equal bays by straight vertical joints. At the left of the left-hand bay, the coursed stone of the gable quoins into the narrower-coursed stone of the rear elevation; this bay has a small square window with sill and lintel, and a doorway with lintel and full-height jambs at the right. The centre bay has a similar doorway at the left, separated from the first door by three massive quoins but with no quoins above this; one similar stone abuts the right hand side of the lintel. There is a small vent below the eaves, and at the right there are alternating quoins up to the eaves. The third bay is in dark red brick in an irregular English Garden Wall bond, corbelled at the eaves, and with a square window with stone sill and lintel, and a plain doorway. To the E the barn abuts the attached farmhouse.

INTERIOR: the floor drops from E to W and at the E the abutment with the foundations of the house is revetted with coursed stone, with an inserted floor over. Opposite the front cart entrance is another with historic timber doors and lintel, now enclosed by the brick infill to the rear and late C20 internal timber partitions. Between these entrances is a stone-flag threshing floor. To the W is animal stalling with various partitions of timber and some upright stone flags. Above this is an inserted timber floor supported by a beam on the line of the truncated original W wall and continuing to the current W wall (the beams here are morticed for posts for stalling), and reached by a timber stair from the threshing floor. To each side of the cart entrances are a King-post truss of hewn timber with tie beam, curved struts and carpenters’ marks. A third, machine-sawn truss of the same design but with straight struts rests on the former W wall, which has been removed except for the section forming the original rear outshut. Hewn purlins and a diamond-set ridge piece span between these three trusses, with machine-sawn rafters throughout and purlins to the W bay. The former W wall has two ground-floor windows now blocked to form niches. The rear doorway into the original outshut is opposed on the N wall by a former doorway with a timber inner lintel, blocked in two phases and containing a niche (the eastern jamb of this doorway is visible on the front elevation as the straight vertical joint c.1m high to the right of the cart entrance). The doorway to the W of this in the N wall, now partially blocked as a window, continues below ground level to the internal floor which is stone-flagged in circulation spaces with concrete within the enclosures. Within the brick infill workshop at the rear are the original external faces of the rear wall of the barn and the E wall of the outshut. Both of these walls are of watershot stone, now painted, and the floor of the workshop comprises stone setts and flags that once formed an approach to the S cart entrance.

SUBSIDIARY FEATURES: stone setts form an apron in front of the building, with a stone kerb to the back of pavement. To the W a curved boundary wall meets a blocked gateway with square gateposts, with a third gatepost to the W of the entrance to the yard.

EXCLUSIONS: pursuant to s.1 (5A) of the Planning (Listed Buildings and Conservation Areas) Act 1990 (‘the Act’) it is declared that the brick walls and Welsh slate roof the SE extension are not of special architectural or historic interest.

History

Early C17 documents refer to a building called Brookhouse in the ownership of the Wood family, but its precise location is unclear; it might have been replaced by the extant farmhouse whose earliest visible structure is of C17 date. Thomas Tickle bought the property in 1691; the Wood family had emigrated in c.1683 and founded Woodbury in New Jersey, USA following decades of persecution as Quakers. The barn is probably of C18 date and originally comprised three bays. To the E was a threshing barn with opposed cart entrances in the central bay. The W bay was a shippon with hayloft over, extending into a rear outshut as is common in Lancashire combination barns. Opposed doors to the shippon probably accessed a passage for removing manure, a typical feature. The 1893 1:2,500 Ordnance Survey (OS) map depicts the barn which has been extended to the W by another bay by this time, to the full depth of the outshut. The barn has subsequently undergone various alterations, including the enclosure with brick walls of the area E of the original outshut, conversion from cattle stalling to stabling, the raising of the lintel of the front cart entrance and the removal in the early C21 of some stone cattle stall dividers.

Reasons for Listing

Reasons for Designation
The barn at Brookhouse Farm, a vernacular combination barn of the C18 with C19 extensions, is listed in Grade II for the following principal reasons:
* Date and rarity: as a rare example of a substantially complete mid-C18 farm building and of an intact threshing floor;
* Degree of survival: including the hewn-timber roof structure displaying good craftsmanship, some stone flag stall dividers and the internal and external stone flag and sett flooring;
* Regional character: for its regionally distinctive plan-form including an integral shippon outshut with through-passage, and its watershot masonry construction.

External Links

• Historic England Listing
• Wikidata Q26677801

External links are from the relevant listing authority and, where applicable, Wikidata. Wikidata IDs may be related buildings as well as this specific building. If you want to add or update a link, you will need to do so by editing the Wikidata entry.

Recommended Books

• 
  Suffolk: East (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Pevsner's Architectural Glossary (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Introductions)
• 
  Planning (Listed Buildings and Conservation Areas) Act 1990: Updated version
• 
  Somerset: South and West (Pevsner Architectural Guides) (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Harrow on the Hill: A photographic portrayal of listed buildings and structures (Historic Buildings Picture Guides)
• 
  Listed Buildings: The Law and Practice of Historic Buildings, Ancient Monuments and Conservation Areas