Howsham Barff Farmhouse

Farmhouse. Built around 1800 for the Yarborough Estate, with alterations and renovations in the early 20th century and again between 1985 and 1986. The farmhouse is constructed of yellow brick in a Flemish bond pattern, with the rear wing rendered. It has a slate roof and an ashlar staircase leading to the entrance. The building has an L-shaped layout, consisting of a central two-room entrance hall facing west, a single-room wing to the rear right, and an outshut forming an angle. It is three storeys high and three bays wide, with a symmetrical design. A chamfered plinth is present, with a single course of black bricks above. A flight of three stone steps leads to the entrance, featuring a balustrade with vase balusters, a moulded string, and a rail, terminating in square panelled piers with corniced caps and carved fruit-bowl finials. The Doric doorcase has attached columns supporting an entablature with roundels in the frieze, a modillioned cornice, and a pediment. It contains a 20th-century half-glazed panelled door and fanlight within a round-arched reveal, pilastered surround, cornice and archivolt. There are 20th-century flat-roofed bay windows on the ground floor to each side, the left one incorporating a central glazed door. On the first floor, a central flat-roofed oriel window sits on brackets, featuring leaded lights beneath an egg-and-dart cornice, while the side bays have three-light casements in original openings with stucco keyed flat arches. The second floor has a central Diocletian window beneath a stucco keyed arch, flanked by lower three-light windows beneath stucco keyed arches. All windows are 20th-century casements, some with leaded lights. A stepped and dentilled brick eaves cornice is present. The stone-coped gables have shaped kneelers, and there are end stacks. Inside, original details remain, including a fine open-well staircase with a ramped and wreathed mahogany handrail, plain balusters, and column newel posts. There are fireplaces with ornamented cast-iron ducks-nest grates in stone surrounds: a fluted wooden chimneypiece on the ground floor right, and a pilastered chimneypiece on the first floor left, featuring carved brackets supporting a fluted cornice mantelpiece. Moulded plaster cornices adorn the main ground and first-floor rooms. Fielded-panel window shutters and doors are set within architraves, and there is a beaded-panelled reveal to the original first-floor central Venetian window.