Grains Barn Farm

Grains Barn Farm is a late 17th-century farmhouse and attached farm building set beneath a common roof structure, with coursed rubble sandstone walls and sandstone dressings, quoins, and a stone slate roof laid to diminishing courses. The building has been substantially altered and extended in the 19th and 20th centuries.

The structure is aligned east-west with an end-entry house part to the east and a three-bay aisled barn to the west incorporating shippons and a stable in the aisles.

The house has a gabled east front with a stable entrance to the left side, providing access to the stable in the south aisle of the attached outbuilding. This entrance is flanked by a light and a nine-pane loft window. The house entrance is located in a lean-to section of an advanced gabled single-storey wing to the right. A blocked three-light mullioned window occupies the centre of the elevation, with a three-light window featuring a rendered surround and mullions further right. Above these are a two-light and a three-light window, both formerly mullioned with 17th-century surrounds. A 20th-century extension to the single-storey wing returns onto the north elevation. The side elevation here has a three-light chamfered mullioned first floor window and two two-light ground floor openings with 17th-century surrounds.

The house interior has undergone extensive 20th-century remodelling including new hearths. An upper floor features a simple 19th-century dog-leg stair, and an exposed fragment of a massive braced truss is now partially enclosed within a late 20th-century bathroom. Elsewhere, exposed spine beams without mouldings are visible.

The outbuilding's south elevation features a wide central full-height double doorway with a shallow arched head with voussoirs and harr-hung vertically-boarded doors. To the right is a stable with a square stone-framed opening and above it a taking-in doorway to its loft. To the left are two 19th-century shippon windows and a doorway with a narrow stone surround. The north elevation has a matching arched opening, now infilled to provide a coal shed and single doorway into the barn with a low loft above within the entrance bay. Inside the voussoired arch curves a timber following the arch curve. The west end of the wall and west gable contain tiers of now-blocked slit breathers.

The outbuilding interior is roof-supported by four pegged king post trusses carrying lapped double side purlins and a ridge purlin. Aisles between the end wall and masonry cross walls to the arched openings are formed by intermediate stone piers supporting arcade plates and the tie beams of smaller braced half trusses within the aisle shippons at the west end of the building. The shippons have 19th and 20th-century standings. The house part has a void over a flat ceiled upper storey used as storage.

Prior to the most recent alterations to the house, the two-cell interior contained two small unheated rooms, the northerly of which had a doorway into the north aisle of the barn.

This is a late 17th-century combined farmhouse and multi-function aisled farmbuilding displaying the distinctive vernacular building traditions of the area, exemplifying the longevity of the combined house and byre tradition in the Pennine uplands.