Byre And Barns At Dieu-La-Cres Abbey Farm Farm Buildings At Dieu-La-Cres Abbey Farm

LEEK

SJ95NE ABBEY GREEN ROAD 611-1/1/7 (East side) 13/04/51 Byre and Barns at Dieu-la-Cres Abbey Farm (Formerly Listed as: ABBEY GREEN Farm buildings of Dieu-la-Cres Abbey Farm)

GV II

Byres and barn. c1820. Incorporating stone from the C13 Abbey of Dieu l'Acres. Coursed and squared stone with slate roofs. EXTERIOR: 2-storeyed byre with 2-storeyed barn at right angles, and single-storeyed byre range, enclosing 3 sides of a courtyard. Byre has a series of pointed-arched doors and windows in both elevations, some clearly assembled from abbey ruins, others possibly cut in C19. Carved stones from abbey used to ornament the building in a highly deliberate decorative scheme, the ornamentation largely concentrated over the openings, and using roof bosses, fragments of tracery, vaulting ribs etc. Single-storeyed byre wing has similar doors and windows in inner face, and its gable wall is ornamented with abbey sculpture, in which a stone coffin lid forms the centrepiece. 2-storeyed barn wing with blocked full-height archway, windows and ventilation slits, again ornamented with moulded capitals and roof bosses taken from abbey. INTERIOR: not inspected. HISTORICAL NOTE: writing in 1862, a local historian, John Sleigh noted that at the beginning of the C19, the ruins of the abbey 'were partially dug up and the materials used in the erection of the stables and outbuildings of the large black and white farmhouse adjacent.' The buildings form a group with the E and W stable ranges of the farm, together with the farmhouse. They represent an important and unusual example of the re-use of early building material in a highly deliberate aesthetic, as a kind of antiquarianism. (Sleigh, John: A History of the Ancient Parish of Leek: Leek: 1862-).

Listing NGR: SJ9829557855