Abattoir At The Old Butcher'S Shop

MORTON ON THE HILL THE STREET Abattoir at the Old Butcher's Shop

II

Former abattoir, stable and outbuildings. Early C18, with C19 additions. Red brick, partly with plinth, and pantile roof, with coped gables with kneelers and with catslide to rear. Short brick stack on front roof slope. Single storey. Plan of abattoir to left with preparation room to right and outbuildings including carthorse stable to rear, with former shop/storage to rear left projecting in part from gable wall. Front has door to left with louvred overlight above and louvred window to right. Beyond is the stack to centre left with a buttress in front. Wider door to right and a further buttress beyond. On left end a further louvred opening and casement in gable with a door in former shop wall and a casement in the end wall of this element. Right main gable end has various blocked openings and a window to the outbuilding under the catslide. Rear has three doors and a low blocked pig or kennel hole to far left. INTERIOR. The very complete interior retains, in the abattoir, the wooden carcass-lifting frame with notched sides, pulley wheel on heavy winding shaft supported on a tie beam, and wood and metal winch (said many years ago to have been made in Kerdiston). Preparation room retains pig-scalding oven/hotplate. Here there are the scars of a former chimney suggesting this may have been originally a brew-house or forge. Tie beam truss roof to both parts. Stable retains mangers and rack and shop retains rows of hooks and a close-boarded and plastered interior. HISTORY. This C19 rural abattoir was used as such for the Morton Hall estate until the 1920's, since when it has survived little altered. It is a fine example of a very unusual building type.