Farm Buildings South Of Bryanston Home Farmhouse

Farm Buildings South of Bryanston Home Farmhouse

A planned farmstead dating to circa the mid-19th century, built for the Portman estate. The complex is constructed mainly in English bond red brick with some blue headers and buff-coloured brick, with low-pitched hipped slate roofs and a large truncated brick stack serving the engine house.

The farmstead comprises a large complex of buildings arranged around two parallel ranges aligned north to south. The eastern range contains cart-sheds and stables on the ground floor, with dormitory and food-store above and married quarters at the north end. The western range has stables and a shelter-shed on the ground floor, a granary above, and riding stables positioned at right angles at the north end. At the south end sit a large mixing house and steam threshing barn, positioned at right angles to each other and both entered from higher ground level at the south-west corner, with root-stores situated below. The barn contains a steam engine house below. The eastern ranges were used as a sawmill, bone mill, and malt mill, containing chaff cutters, corn and cake crushers, and apparatus to steam food using waste steam. On the west side is a stock-yard with arcaded shelter-sheds on the east and south sides and vaulted root-stores on the west side. Between the two stable-ranges lies a narrow stable yard.

The buildings are mainly two storeys. The east elevation of the eastern range comprises 21 bays with elliptically arched gauged brick windows on the first floor, some fitted with multi-pane iron-frame casements. A six-bay cart-shed at the centre also features elliptical arches, with a loading door above the right-hand bay and steps to a first-floor door on the right, and later 19th-century porches at the far right-hand end. The west elevation and the east elevation of the western range facing the stable yard display similar elliptically arched windows and doorways, with stable doors set inside at angles to each other. The north ends of both ranges also have elliptically arched windows. The west elevation of the western range features a segmentally arched arcade to the shelter-shed, loading doors, and elliptically arched windows on the first floor. The mixing house, positioned at right angles, has a segmental arched arcade on the ground floor and segmentally arched windows and a loading door above, with a later lean-to addition on the right. The barn and mill to the south also have elliptically arched openings.

Interior features include exposed tie-beam trusses in the roofs and a wooden sack-hoist wheel with curled iron spikes in the granary. Brick-vaulted root-stores run beneath the mixing house and barn, one vault containing an earth closet; the steam engine has been removed. The farmstead represents an interesting example of a planned complex specially designed to emphasise intensive feed production for the farm's animals, incorporating its own power source within a single integrated complex.