Brookhouse Farm barn

Brookhouse Farm Barn

A three-bay threshing barn dating from the 18th century, with alterations made during the 19th and 20th centuries.

The barn is constructed of buff sandstone and some brick with stone flag roofs. Its plan comprises three bays including a shippon-outshut to the west, and has been extended to the west and rear.

The barn is attached to Brookhouse farmhouse and cottage and stands on the south side of Holcombe Road as it rises north of Brookhouse Bridge. The front (north) elevation is partially obscured on the left by the cottage. A large cart entrance sits left of centre with boarding above the timber doors. To the right of the cart entrance is a straight vertical joint rising to approximately one metre, with larger-coursed stone to its right. Beyond this are a door that has been partially blocked to form a window and another ground-floor window, with a large circular pitching eye at eaves level between the two. Irregularly-spaced square vent holes punctuate the elevation. The right return is blank and built of squared, watershot stone. The gable is asymmetrical with the ridge positioned 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 contains 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 with no quoins above. One similar stone abuts the right-hand side of the lintel. A small vent appears below the eaves, and alternating quoins rise to the eaves at the right. The third bay is constructed of dark red brick in irregular English Garden Wall bond, corbelled at the eaves, and contains a square window with stone sill and lintel and a plain doorway. To the east the barn abuts the attached farmhouse.

Interior

The floor drops from east to west. At the east, the abutment with the house foundations is revetted with coursed stone, with an inserted floor above. Opposite the front cart entrance is another entrance with historic timber doors and lintel, now enclosed by brick infill to the rear and late 20th-century internal timber partitions. Between these entrances lies a stone-flag threshing floor. To the west 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 west wall and continuing to the current west 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 truss, machine-sawn but of the same design but with straight struts, rests on the former west 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 west bay.

The former west wall contains two ground-floor windows now blocked to form niches. The rear doorway into the original outshut is opposed on the north 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 approximately one metre high to the right of the cart entrance. The doorway to the west of this in the north 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 east wall of the outshut. Both walls are of watershot stone, now painted. The floor of the workshop comprises stone setts and flags that once formed an approach to the south cart entrance.

Setting and Features

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

The brick walls and Welsh slate roof of the south-east extension are excluded from listing as they are not considered to be of special architectural or historic interest.