Oaks Barn

Field barn with an integrated cow shelter, C17 or early C18 with later alterations.

MATERIALS: rubble-sandstone walls with large sandstone quoins and some ashlar detailing; a slate roof with roof lights, and a stone ridge and coped gables.

PLAN: a broadly rectangular barn orientated roughly east to west with a cow shelter to the slightly wider east end giving an overall T-shaped footprint.

EXTERIOR: a single-storey barn, beneath an asymmetrical pitched roof. The south elevation has a full-height, wide central opening with alternating long and short quoins and a timber lintel. The easternmost bay projects forward and has two ventilation slits. Two C20 lean-to stores have been built against this side. The west gable has substantial stone quoins, a large late-C20 entrance with a stone lintel, and a boarded-up opening above with a stone surround and a concrete cill. The east elevation, which is wider than the rest of the barn, has substantial quoins and an entrance to each end with crudely-shaped, substantial stone lintels and plank doors with strap hinges. There is a central ground floor ventilation slit, and to the apex there is an opening with a late-C20 stone lintel. The left side of the roof finishes at a slightly lower level than the right side on this elevation. The north elevation has two rows of small square ventilation holes beneath the eaves of the western part; the slightly projecting western part is quoined.

INTERIOR: divided into two spaces by a substantial stone partition wall with large quoins, and a central entrance. The smaller but wider eastern compartment is considered to have served as a cow shelter with a hayloft above; the hayloft floor appears to have been replaced in the C19. The ground floor at this end is of earth and cobble. The larger western compartment is thought to have served as a storage barn and has a largely earthen floor. At the east end, the surviving raised-cruck truss embedded in the stone partition wall comprises a pair of blades joined by a saddle piece which has been damaged at one end, with a slightly eroded collar beam below, and cruck spurs and packing pieces either side of the blades; there is evidence that a lower collar beam has been removed and possibly partially reused as an additional packing piece for the right-hand blade. The roof trusses to the west end comprise a pair of triangular C19 queen-post trusses. The rest of the roof structure including the purlins, rafters and ridge piece dates to the late C20.