Stirbridge Farm

Stirbridge Farm is a Grade II listed building dating from the 18th century. It is constructed from rubble stone with colourwash, with some brick to the rear outshut. The roof is covered in plain clay tile, with a stone rubble stack to the main range and a red brick stack to the outshut.

The building is one-and-a-half storeys tall and comprises two bays with a two-room, single-depth plan and a rear outshut. The main elevation features a central entrance doorway flanked by ground-floor windows, with two windows above. The door frame and window frames are pegged; the windows are multi-paned timber casements of slightly varying styles, while the door is a 19th-century addition. The front roof slope has been raised, with three courses of brick inserted under the eaves. The first-floor windows have been raised in their openings by the addition of brick courses beneath them to accommodate this increased roof height. The 19th-century rear outshut sits under a catslide roof and contains two timber-framed windows and an entrance doorway to the north end. At the southern end, a half-round projection housing a bread oven rises to approximately 2 metres in height. The footprint of an earlier extension survives at this southern end.

Internally, the main range is divided into two rooms on both floors by timber-framed partitions, and the outshut is similarly divided by a brick partition. The ground-floor rooms in the main range feature large chamfered axial beams with exposed ceiling joists, some of which are chamfered. The southern room contains a fireplace that has been much altered, with stone and brick infill and the remains of a timber bressumer over the opening; the current fireplace is a crude stone construction apparently dating from the 20th century. A plank and batten door between the two rooms, possibly dating from the late 18th century, is set within a timber-framed partition formed from simple uprights with lath and plaster on one side only. The stair, a 19th-century replacement behind a plank and batten door of similar date, is housed in this room. Some stone flags survive in the flooring. The rear outshut contains a kitchen with an early-20th-century range and a former pantry whose window has an internal sliding mesh screen. The outshut roof is exposed, formed from common rafters set on single purlins.

The first floor of the main range has narrow floorboards. The roof contains a single closed truss separating the rooms, comprising a tie-beam interrupted by the doorway, principal rafters, single purlins, queen posts and collar, with additional vertical struts between the queen posts and V-struts above the collar. Below the tie-beam are X-shaped braces to either side of the central doorway. One of the purlins is a much later replacement. The timber-frame infill and ceiling are lath and plaster. The southern room contains a late-19th-century cast-iron fireplace.