Former Lower Hollins farmhouse, including attached barn, garden and retaining walls, setted yard and detached outbuilding

Farm dwellings and barn of probable 17th-century origins, remodelled in phases in the early 19th century.

Materials and Construction

The buildings are constructed from local grit stone with stone roof flags and timber and cast-iron rainwater goods.

Plan and Layout

The complex follows a laithe-house plan aligned east-west, comprising three cottages with a barn to the east and a northern pantry outshut. The buildings are set into a hillside above the River Calder as part of a fold of similar structures, facing south.

Main Exterior Features

The dwelling section is two storeys with three bays. The coursed squared masonry is watershot, with inappropriate modern cement ribbon pointing. The left angle has large quoins. Openings have plain stone surrounds and flat-faced mullions to the windows.

From left to right, Number 9 has a four-panel door and a two-light window to the first floor with a late-19th-century sliding sash in the left light and a non-opening light with glazing bars. Number 10 has a two-light ground-floor window and a window in a partially-blocked doorway, with a three-light first-floor window. Number 11 has former two-light windows to each floor with removed mullions (now all modern timber with some opening casements) and a modern glazed timber door. Each cottage has a stone chimney stack to its left with stone verges and cornices, except Number 9's which is truncated. Ogee cast-iron gutters are carried on wrought-iron stays.

The barn to the right has a round-arched cart entry to the left of centre, with tie-stones to the jambs and an arched window above. To the left of this and at the right-hand end are shippon doorways also with tie-stones and vertical-plank timber doors. To the far left is an inserted window with one round-arched vent above it. The barn's timber box gutters are supported by plain stone corbels.

Barn East and Rear Walls

The east wall is gabled and asymmetrical with lower eaves to the right, featuring a round-arched owl-hole and vents. At ground floor are two small windows and a large vent. The rear wall of the barn is largely blind but has a small doorway opposite the cart entrance, reached by stone steps, and a window above. There is a small inward return to the rear wall of the cottages.

Cottage Rear Wall and Outshut

The rear wall of the cottages has slobbered narrow-coursed masonry to the ground floor. Each bay has a window to each floor with no mullions, all modern timber. The left-hand ground-floor window has a double-chamfered surround. To the right the outshut projects. In the angle is a two-light mullioned window with 19th-century sash windows. The rear wall is gabled with a central stack and a small first-floor window.

West Walls and Blocked Openings

The west walls of the outshut and house are blind. The house is gabled and has a blocked two-light mullioned window, probably 17th-century, below the gable. The ground floor is obscured by a raised path.

Interior: Number 9

The interior retains much historic building fabric including hewn joists and roof purlins, late-18th or early-19th-century squared stone fire surrounds, and cantilevered stone stairs. The ground floors are concrete and ceiling beams are modern replacements.

Number 9 retains a fireplace to each floor, with a very deep lintel and a chamfered mantel shelf to the ground floor. The front door is panelled externally but a ledged four-plank door internally. An adjacent blocked doorway formerly accessed Number 10, now replaced by a wide opening to the north end of the party wall. The stairs are walled off with an open doorway beneath them in the north-west corner. The west wall here has a blocked narrow window (now below ground) and the north wall a blocked square window and small niche below. The stair door is four-panelled to the front and planked to the rear. A hewn purlin is exposed over the stairs, corbelled on the inner wall.

Interior: Number 10

Number 10 has a shouldered narrow former doorway with a wide lintel, blocked in stone, in the party wall with Number 11, and an inserted doorway in the north end of the wall. The parlour chimney breast is plastered but thought to retain its stone surround. The stairs and kitchen along the rear wall are walled off. Below the stairs is a sunken access to the outshut, which contains a stone-vaulted pantry with stone-flagged floor, wall niches and stone shelves, and a boarded former window to the east. Stone steps from the parlour access a half-landing, with three steps to the north to a room over the pantry. The chimney breast is plastered but retains the chamfered mantel shelf and the stone fire surround is thought to survive beneath the plaster. Steps along the rear wall from the half-landing access the first floor of the housebody, which is open and still has some modern finishes. A stone fire surround with chamfered mantelshelf survives, with one four-panelled door. An inserted doorway accesses the former Number 11.

Interior: Number 11

Number 11 has lost its downstairs fire surround but retains the one upstairs with its chamfered mantelshelf.

Barn Interior

The barn floor is stone-flagged. Its strutted queen-post roof trusses are all machine-sawn replacements, but the pegged-through purlins probably match historic design; some hewn purlins survive, probably reused. East and west shippons have stone walls with feeding openings facing the cartway, and flat timber roofs forming haylofts above. The western shippon has been raised in brick above sill level, probably to accommodate horses. Both retain some late-19th-century stalling and plank mistal doors to the front wall. There has been some collapse of the roof structure in the south-east corner, with consequent damage to the eastern shippon. The west shippon retains ceramic water troughs and a pair of manger brackets in the north-west corner. The eastern shippon is slightly sunken with steps down to it against the front wall.

The vents and owl-hole of the east wall are brick-blocked internally. The west wall has a straight vertical joint in the north corner, which rises above embedded roof flags below the current roofline. There is a stone-blocked doorway with squared surrounds and stone-blocked slit vents.

Subsidiary Buildings and Features

To the west of the house, a raised path is retained by a dry-stone wall.

To the south of the house is a detached single-storey building of similar materials and detailing, with a canted east wall and a monopitch roof with hewn purlins. The building is divided into three chambers, each around 3 metres long and 1.5 metres wide, each with its own doorway in the south wall.

The yard in front of the building is paved with squared stone setts of varying sizes. At the east end is a stone gatepost.

To the north of the house is a late-19th-century garden wall of coursed squared stone. Adjacent to the western path this has triangular coping stones, though some were removed in 2025 to accommodate scaffolding. Elsewhere the coping stones are more rounded.