Bunkers Farm

Bunkers Farm is a model farm dating from the mid-19th century, built of red brick and flint with stone dressings. Some older timber framing has been re-used in the construction. The roofs are covered in slate and clay tiles. The farmstead follows a loose courtyard plan with double yards.

The Processing Barn and Stables

On the north side, abutting the road, stands a long two-storey processing barn constructed of brick with coursed flintwork panels, punctuated by cast iron ventilation grilles. The roof has been re-covered in slate. The gable ends are entirely in red brick, with the west gable featuring a three-light Tudor-style stone mullion window with diamond leaded lights. A short return wing on the west side has a blind end gable and an original clay tile roof.

High quality dressed stones, some possibly re-used from earlier buildings, have been variously employed as quoins (including on the south-west corner of the wing), plinths, and surrounds for four of the doorways on the road elevation. The fifth doorway, with a brick surround, is a later insertion. The wooden thresholds in the doorways provide evidence of threshing activity inside and were intended to stop grains from spilling onto the road. All the windows and doors in the processing barn are currently boarded up, and some of the openings have been bricked in.

In the centre of the south front stands a square engine house chimney, evidence of the use of mechanised power in the building. To the west of the chimney is a 20th-century cast iron water tank positioned over a blind arcade, to which is attached a modern wall dividing the two yards. These later additions are not of special interest in themselves, but their footprint is important as a reminder of the original division between the courtyards.

Attached to the east of the processing barn is a single-storey red brick stable block with a clay tile roof.

The L-Shaped Barn and Cartshed

On the south-east corner of the site stands an L-shaped vernacular-style barn building constructed of red brick with weatherboarding and a clay tile roof. It has an L-shaped lean-to in the inner angle which is weatherboarded with a modern pantile roof. The north end gable of the barn, facing the stables, has brick and coursed flint panels similar to those on the processing barn.

Attached to the west of the barn is an open cartshed with a brick and flint rear wall, four round brick columns at the front, and a slate roof. The brick and flint enclosure wall of the farm continues to the west, and there is a corrugated shed which is not of special interest.

Interior of the Processing Barn

The interior of the processing barn is twenty-four bays long and is almost entirely open. The western three bays are partitioned off on both floors to form part of the return wing. The ground floor has an east end room and a small weatherboarded enclosure housing a later water tank, but is otherwise unpartitioned. It has cast iron columns at mid-point supporting transverse wooden beams and floor joists.

The upper floor is entirely open and has cast iron trusses with diminishing roundels, supporting a timber and iron rod roof with some skylights. The square grain-conveying pipe suspended below the trusses is a 20th-century insertion and not of special interest.

There is a good survival of original machinery in the building, including a large winnowing machine in the centre of the ground floor and line shafting for belt drives on both ground and first floors.

Interior of the Stable Block

The stable block has a stone paved floor and a twin angle king-post roof. There are a large number of dividing stalls but these are modern additions and not of special interest. The original stalls were aligned with the ventilation slits in the walls.

Interior of the L-Shaped Barn

The L-shaped barn building is divided internally into two separate barns, south and east. The south barn is a single space with a roof which has some 19th-century king-post trusses and some older re-used trusses with raking queen struts. The room inside the lean-to has a raised timber floor with timber rails to the right, indicating the possible use of portable machinery. The brick wall between the two barns has a pattern of ventilation grilles similar to that in the processing barn.

The east barn has a raised wooden threshing floor in the centre with timber mowsteads on each side, dividing the barn into three. The left side is currently partitioned off. The roof has a similar mixture of 19th-century and older trusses as in the south barn. A plank door with strap hinges leads into a small room in the lean-to, which has a plank bench and a re-used roof truss. This may have been a mess room.

Interior of the Cartshed

The open cartshed has a king-post roof, with Baltic shipping marks on the softwood trusses. These markings appear on timbers throughout the farmstead but are most visible in the cartshed.

Historical Context

In 1811 John Dickinson (1782-1869) acquired the paper mill at Nash Mills, which lies in the valley below Bunkers Farm. He had patented a mechanical means of manufacturing paper and was looking for a site to try out his invention. Dickinson became a leading figure in England's paper manufacturing industry and also owned the nearby Croxley and Apsley paper mills. He invented gummed envelopes in the mid-19th century, and his company launched the Lion Brand and Basildon Bond brands, owning manufacturing sites across the world.

He lived in a house on the Nash Mills site until the 1830s, when he moved into a grander new house, Abbots Hill House (now a school) further up the valley. He purchased the adjoining Chambersbury Estate, which included Bunkers Farm, probably in 1844 and certainly by 1850. During the 1850s or 1860s he demolished the old buildings at Bunkers Farm and built a new model farmstead, as part of the Abbots Hill Estate.

Farm building design and layout were affected by a number of factors from the 1840s. These included the application of scientific principles to planning, leading to the more rational use of buildings and communication between them; the extension of mechanisation (such as steam power) for working threshing and other machinery; and the introduction of new materials such as imported softwood, machine-made brick and cast-iron fittings. These principles were all applied by John Dickinson to his model farmstead. The farm was presumably used for grain processing, as there is no evidence of livestock being housed in any numbers. It is also possible that the farm had a research function in connection with the paper-making industry, as it is known that in the mid-19th century the mills owned by John Dickinson & Co. were experimenting with the use of field crops in the paper-making process.

Bunkers Farm appears substantially in its present form on the first edition Ordnance Survey map surveyed in 1877 and published in 1879. The two courtyards, with the processing barn and stables on their north side and the L-shaped barn and cartshed on the south side, are as existing. There is a trough marked in the east yard on the map.

Three structures shown on the map are no longer in existence: a narrow shed on the south side of the west yard, whose rear wall survives as part of the brick and flint enclosure wall of the farmstead; another narrow shed on the west side of the west yard; and a building which extended southwards from the centre of the processing barn and divided the two yards. To the right of the junction of this building and the processing barn there is a projection on the map which is larger than the existing chimney, and may therefore indicate a lost engine house or boiler house. This is supported by physical evidence of alterations to the façade of the processing barn to the right of the chimney. The water tank which now stands on the site was put in sometime between 1898 and 1924. The second edition map of 1898 shows an open shed added to the east of the farm, probably a cartshed, which is no longer there. None of the maps show a farmhouse, which confirms the farm's link with Abbots Hill House and Nash Mills.