Home Farm, Apley Park

Home Farm is a large agricultural complex built in red brick laid in English bond with blue brick dressings and a slate roof. The covered cattle yards feature trusses of laminated timber supported by cast iron columns.

The building is arranged around two large covered yards to the south, designed to protect cattle and manure from the weather. These yards are surrounded by pens for fattening individual cattle. A pedestrian walkway runs at ground floor level between the yards, with hay lofts at first floor level above, from which feed could be thrown down to the cattle through doorways. To the north of the main block is a barn and boiler house containing an engine designed to connect to feed preparation rooms equipped with belt-driven machinery including cake crushers, grinders, and chaff cutters.

The south front is symmetrical with a projecting central wing of three bays and two storeys. This wing has a taking-in door at first floor level and an oculus to the gable. Above stands a square bellcote with arched openings. Old photographs show this formerly had a hipped roof, but it now has a flat roof with a weather vane. Single-storey wings to either side have four bays of openings. The four cart entrances have been widened in the 20th century with flat heads, while pedestrian doorways have cambered heads. Projecting wings at either end of the front have cambered-headed windows to the ground floor and occuli to the gables.

The east and west flanks both have wide arched entrances projecting up into gables through which cattle enter the covered yards, flanked by smaller doors giving access to individual stalls around the yard perimeter. The northern front is two storeys, with basket-arched entrances to storage bays for farm machinery at ground floor level and taking-in doors with gabled heads at first floor. A gabled wing projects from the centre of this front, with the boiler room chimney attached to its western flank. The chimney has a square base with arched niches to three sides, the body tapering above via offsets to an octagonal upper section with a moulded top.

The two covered yards each have a series of three pitched roofs with central roof lights, supported by trusses combining solid timbers and laminated beams. The central roof trusses differ from the lattice trusses to either side in having laminated semi-circular arches. Central roofs have louvered vents to either side and are supported on stout cast iron columns. The central feeding gallery is also supported on iron columns and beams. Arcades with cambered arches surround the yards. The fattening pens retain their original mangers and water troughs, though several now have new metal gates. In the northern wing, the mixing room contains the belt drive and meal crushing machine, with an original cast iron spiral staircase leading up to the feed store at first floor level. Several floors have been replaced with poured concrete, including those to the covered yards and fattening pens, but the majority of original fittings survive throughout, including metal-framed windows, doors, and door furnishings.

To the east of the home farm building stands a separate but related manager's office, single-storey, built in red brick with a hipped slate roof. Its symmetrical west front has plank doors with cambered heads at either side of a canted bay window. The interior features a tiled lobby and original fitted cupboards flanking a stone fire surround with an arched grate.