Haighton Top Farmhouse

Haighton Top Farmhouse is a farmhouse, now a house, that dates primarily from the late 17th century but incorporates parts of an earlier timber-framed building. It has been recently altered and extended. The exterior is clad in hand-made brick on a stone plinth, topped with a two-span slate roof. The building has an L-shaped plan due to a later addition on the north side of the east bay of the original two-unit house, which has been further extended to create a square plan.

The farmhouse is two storeys high, featuring a gabled east front with a round-headed doorway to the right of the junction. Above this doorway is a blank brick frame that is said to have once held a carved wooden panel. To the left, the gable of the front range has a long label over a modern three-light casement window with a rendered surround on the ground floor, and a recessed three-light window with rendered mullions and a label on the first floor. To the right, there is a three-light casement window on each floor. A chimney stack is located in the valley of the roof.

The south front has a rendered band and features two windows at ground floor and three above, all of which are two or three-light casements with rendered surrounds. The interior is particularly noteworthy, retaining significant remains of the former three-bay timber-framed two-unit house, especially on the first floor. Here, the gable walls include trusses with convex braces rising from posts to ties, king posts, and angled struts, along with one of the original intermediate trusses that lacks a king post. The chamber over the house part has an inserted ceiling with joists supported on collars and an inserted timber-framed partition that creates a passage at the top of the relocated staircase. The service end is partitioned axially on the first floor, though this is no longer the case on the ground floor. The chimney stack, now located in the partition between the house part and the added parlour to the north, is possibly in its original position, suggesting it was once external to the north side wall. Historically, the farmhouse is said to have been used as a dame school.