The Brookhouse

The Brookhouse is a farmhouse, now a house, likely dating from the late 16th or early 17th century. It was partially remodelled around 1700, with later additions and alterations. The building was dismantled and removed from its original site in the 1970s and is currently being re-erected in a disused railway cutting.

The house is timber framed with a dressed and coursed sandstone plinth, and mid-19th century purplish-brown brick cladding to the rear. A plain tiled roof covers the structure. Originally a four-bay partly open hall of longhouse type, it included an unheated storage bay or granary at the lower end, accessed by external lateral steps to the rear. Around 1700, the eastern middle bay was floored over, and a double stack was inserted at its west end, replacing a dual firehood that had heated both the eastern and western middle bays. A stone stack was built against the gable end of the western bay, which was originally unheated. The property has one storey and an attic, with a cellar beneath the right-hand bay.

The timber framing features double-pegged close studding with single cross rails and short tension braces. The right-hand gable end is jettied with herringbone decoration. At the time of the 1984 survey, there were three windows to the ground floor and three gabled eaves dormers; the dormer over the right-hand middle bay is larger than the other two. All are two-light, late 20th century latticed casements. The former storage bay on the left-hand side had not yet been re-erected during the survey. A gabled stone porch with a 1636 datestone sits over the entrance on the left. A brick ridge stack with capping is immediately to the right of the porch. Two partly exposed wall posts are visible on the brick-clad rear.

The interior was under reconstruction during the 1984 survey, but the timber frame, including the original firehood's close studding, was exposed. There are several 17th-century plank and muntin doors. The cellar, under the right-hand bay and lit by a four-light mullioned window at ground level, incorporates stonework from the 13th-century Cistercian Abbey of Hulton, near the house’s original location at Bucknall, Stoke-on-Trent, including mason's marks. The roof is of Queen-strut type, with two collars and two tiers of wind braces. During the re-erection, the building’s axis has been changed, effectively reversing the orientation.