Outbuilding at Low Melwood Farm

This is a former farmhouse, incorporating remnants of a Carthusian Priory and later houses, now used as a farm outbuilding. The building’s origins lie in the 15th and 16th centuries, with significant remodelling in the later 16th century, partial rebuilding in the 1680s, and further rebuilding in the mid-19th century. In the 1960s, part of the structure was demolished, lowered to a single storey, and converted into a storehouse. Construction is primarily brick, largely rendered and pebbledashed, with limestone ashlar dressings. It has a corrugated iron roof. The building is arranged in an L-shape, consisting of a two-room west wing (originally the house front) and a three-room south wing. It has a basement and is single-storied. Quoins are present.

The south side, divided into two builds, features a slightly projecting section to the right. This section has a chamfered plinth that incorporates a blocked ashlar square-headed basement opening and a blocked 16th-century basket-arched chamfered door. The door contains a good ashlar relief tablet bearing the Mowbray arms and mantled helm, which was reset in the 1960s from a position above the former west front door. Two 20th-century enlargements of ground-floor openings are located to the right, with double board doors. To the left section is a blocked opening with reused medieval ashlar mullion serving as a sill. The west side, obscured by a 20th century addition, retains remnants of a plinth and large inserted 20th-century openings.

The interior is approximately 1 meter above ground level. The ground floor of the west wing has been removed, a cellar infilled in the central south room, and a tiled floor is present in the east room. A blocked opening beneath a chamfered segmental-pointed ashlar arch is visible in the south-west room. Traces of a late 18th to early 19th-century interior remain, including an arched alcove and fragments of plaster cornice. The building’s original ground floor height, and earlier descriptions, include reference to a stone pillar in the cellar, suggesting the possible incorporation of a former medieval undercroft. The building stands within a large moated enclosure. Archaeological excavations in 1968 revealed late medieval brick wall foundations within this enclosure. Low Melwood, or Axholme Priory, was founded between 1397 and 1398 and dissolved in 1538. It is designated a Scheduled Ancient Monument (County No. 119).