Garden Walls Including Owl House At Home Farm, Morton Hall Estate

376/0/10001 18-AUG-03

MORTON ON THE HILL GARDEN WALLS INCLUDING OWL HOUSE AT HOME FARM, MORTON HALL ESTATE

II

Garden walls and owl house. c. 1830. Red brick laid in Flemish bond. PLAN: 2 lengths of wall remain meeting at a corner where there is an owl house. EXTERIOR: tall south and west walls with flat stone capping, meeting at a right angle. Burnt headers used randomly. The south wall with a doorway under a semi-circular head. The outside face of both walls with brick piers at intervals. At the corner of the walls is a circular brick owl house carried on a sandstone corbel to the inner angle and brick corbelling to the outer angle. 2 storeys terminating in flat brick coping. 2 square openings face north, each formerly leading to a chamber. INTERIOR: both stages with brick vanes acting as roosts, otherwise plain. The building has been identified as a purpose-built owl house, and an otherwise unknown building type. Owl houses are known to have been built on farms, but the favoured formula was to incorporate them in gable ends of barns, or even just to have an owl hole by which the birds could enter and exit, the purpose being control of vermin. This extremely unusual two-stage structure must be presumed to have been rare even when built. Information from Norfolk Archaeological Unit.