The Farmhouse and attached former cart store, Stuppington Court Farm

The Farmhouse and attached former cart store at Stuppington Court Farm

This is a former pair of farm cottages with an attached cart store, now converted to a house with attached garaging. The buildings stand as part of a historic farmstead on Merton Lane, with surviving elements dating from the late 17th and 18th centuries.

The Farmhouse is of 18th-century date, with an internal brick dated 177(1?). The attached former cart store dates from the late 17th or early 18th century. Both buildings underwent restoration in 1983.

The Farmhouse is constructed of red brick, predominantly in Flemish bond, with a hipped tiled roof and two brick chimneystacks featuring moulded caps. The former cart store is also of red brick, originally open-fronted and supported on wooden piers, with a tiled roof.

The plan is complex and irregular. The Farmhouse comprises two former cottages, both of two storeys. The eastern cottage has a single-storey projection to the rear with three hips. The western cottage is set at an angle to the eastern one. An adjoining single-storey farm building runs between them, its eastern part incorporated into the Farmhouse and its western part forming an eight-bay former cart store. Fenestration throughout is mainly casement windows, with cambered heads to the ground floor windows.

The south or entrance front displays five casement windows to the two-storey section, mostly tripartite except for the penultimate first-floor window to the east. The two western first-floor windows and two western ground-floor windows date from circa 1983. A doorcase to the east retains its cambered arch but has a late 20th-century plank door flanked by sidelights. A similar cambered arch frames the penultimate western window. To the west is a single-storey section with two casement windows and a flat-arched opening now blocked by weatherboarding. The former open-fronted cart store, eight bays of brick supported on wooden posts, extends to the west.

The east side features a tall external brick chimneystack with tumbling-in detail. At the south end are casement windows to both floors. At the north end, a lower hipped projection contains a cambered-headed doorcase and casement window. The north elevation is partly obscured by a single-storey 18th-century section of three bays with a three-hip roof and two brick chimneystacks, accompanied by three casement windows. The western three bays of the two-storey section have three casement windows, with two cambered-headed windows to the ground floor and a cambered-headed entrance with 20th-century double doors. The western end of the first floor was rebuilt in 1983. The remainder of this elevation, including part of the Farmhouse and the former cart store, contains a further casement window and entrance of circa 1983, together with six stepped buttresses.

Internally, a dated brick visible near the skirting board in the south-eastern room is dated 177(1?). The roof structure of the two-storey section, except for the western bay, is original, featuring staggered purlins, collar beams and pegged rafters. Original tie beams were retained, though the ceiling heights of both ground and first-floor rooms were raised. The ground-floor sitting room has axial beams and some old floor joists. The dining room incorporates a reused wallplate and retains major old timbers, though the floor joists are 20th-century. An adjoining room contains a spine beam not in line with that of the dining room and a blocked-in cambered brick arch. On the first floor, exposed rafters project a foot or two below an inserted ceiling supported on pitch-pine inserted beams. The staircase, internal partitions and doors are all late 20th-century. The attached cart store retains a roof structure of reused oak joists. Its clasped side-purlin construction indicates a late 17th or early 18th-century date, and most of the arcade posts are original.

Historical evidence suggests buildings at Stuppington Farm date from at least the late 17th or early 18th century. The 1874 Ordnance Survey map shows the farmstead comprised seven significant buildings. The Farmhouse with its attached farm building appears with its current footprint but at that date consisted of two farm cottages with an attached farm building built as a cart store to the west. The cart store had likely been converted to pigsties by then, as three rectangular enclosures are shown in front of it. Two large barns stood to the southwest, with the actual farmhouse positioned to the southeast; this building appears on the 1897 map but was demolished by 1907. A large building with a curved north wall, shown on the 1874 map between the barns and farmhouse, had disappeared by 1897. An oasthouse, part of the farm group at the corner of Stuppington Lane and Merton Lane, is recorded on the 1874 map.

A September 1964 aerial photograph shows the farm cottages with a paired entrance. By this date, part of the western cottage roof had collapsed and been temporarily capped with a flat corrugated sheet roof. The open front to the cart store had been closed in, though the arcade posts remained visible. In 1983, the farm complex was converted into a small residential estate. The farm cottages were restored by raising part of the flat-roofed extension to two storeys and re-roofing the remainder at the height of the single-storey cart store. The latter was restored and converted to provide covered parking. Simultaneously, the two barns were converted to residential accommodation and three new houses were built on the eastern side of the site.

Despite extensive restoration following dereliction around 1983, both the Farmhouse and attached former cart store retain a significant proportion of late 17th and 18th-century fabric, including external walls, the major part of the roof structure and some main timbers. The plan form of two agricultural cottages built not entirely in line, with a single-storey rear section featuring three hips to the eastern cottage, is unusual, as is the exceptionally large attached cart store. Despite some reorganisation of rooms, the essential layout survives. The Farmhouse and attached former cart store form part of a group with two contemporary grade II listed barns, which comprise the surviving elements of the Stuppington farmstead.