Summary

Pigsties, with pens, dating from the late C19.

Description

Pigsties, with pens, dating from the late C19.

MATERIALS: red brick, with blue brick detailing, and a plain clay tile roof.

PLAN: rectangular plan, with a swill tank to the northern bay and three pigsties with walled pens running southwards.

EXTERIOR: the building is a low single storey of four bays. The northernmost bay houses a swill tank, accessed by a low, rectangular opening in the main elevation. The other three bays are three pigsties, each with a semi-circular arched opening of bull-nosed brick, with a row of blue bricks in the voussoirs. Each sty has a pen to the front, with red brick walled with rounded-brick copings, the pens with dark brick setts to the floor, and built-in brick troughs. The southern gable end has a ventilator slit in the brickwork.

INTERIOR: the roof is formed from paired common rafters and a ridge plank.

History

Tidbury Green Farm, a loose courtyard farm, has origins in the C17, and the current farmhouse dates originally from this period. It may have begun as a timber-framed house, in common with the majority of farms in the area, and later have been encased in brick; some of the internal joinery clearly dates from the C17, and there is evidence of timber framing with stone infill in the attics, but the exterior brickwork is indicative of a date in the late C18 or early C19, both stylistically and from the appearance of the bricks. The house underwent some updating internally in the C18 and the C19. The tithe map of 1840 shows the house, barn and a building on the site of the cowhouse, which follows the footprint of the existing building but with additions to the front at either end, not now extant. A row of pigsties with its attendant pens were added between 1884 and 1904, in which year it is shown for the first time on the 1:2500 Ordnance Survey. At this point, the farm, along with a number of others in the locality, was part of the estate of Henry Aylesbury Walker Aylesbury, who died in 1905, but whose estate was retained until the First World War. A large part of the estate was sold by auction in 1917, including Tidbury Green Farm, which was purchased by its tenant farmer. The farm buildings, which share an estate style, are shown on a plan accompanying the sales particulars, and described briefly: the house of brick and tile, with the rooms detailed, including an attic cheese room, outbuildings, well and garden; and the farm buildings, comprising a four-stall stable, double-bay barn, five-tie cowhouse and calf pen, seven-tie cowhouse, three pigsties and an implement shed. All these buildings survive today, though the former implement shed has been altered several times and now exists only as a roof over a series of brick piers, rather than the open-fronted shed shown on the 1917 plan and the earlier Ordnance Survey maps, which show that it had opposite sides infilled and opened at various times.

During the C20, some minor alterations were made to the buildings, including the insertion of a new ground-floor fireplace in the house, and some cosmetic changes, including the replacement of some of the windows in uPVC; and a shed was added extending at right angles from the long rear elevation of the barn. During the Second World War, a stray bomb landed to the east of the farm, causing the eastern gable end chimney to fall from the house; the apex of the gable and the stack were rebuilt. The farm remained in the same family’s ownership until the time of inspection in 2016.

Reasons for Listing

The pigsties at Tidbury Green Farm are listed at Grade II for the following principal reasons:
* Architectural interest: the pigsties are good and substantially complete example of vernacular farm building whose function is clearly evident in its historic fabric;
* Group value: as part of a functionally-related group from an important period in the development of English agriculture;
* Historic interest: the farm buildings illustrate the character and development of regional farming traditions within the context of the overall national patterns in farming history;
* Rarity: the group is a reminder of the formerly agricultural nature of the West Midlands, prior to the changes brought by the Industrial Revolution;
* Degree of survival: pigsties survive remarkably well.

External Links

• Historic England Listing
• Wikidata Q26678122

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

• 
  Maintaining and Repairing Old Houses: A Guide to Conservation, Sustainability and Economy
• 
  Warwickshire (Pevsner Architectural Guides) (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Gloucestershire 1: The Cotswolds: Cotswolds Pt. 1 (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  England's Post-War Listed Buildings
• 
  Setting up a Listed Building Heritage Partnership Agreement: Historic England Advice Note 5
• 
  Staffordshire (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)