Rowden Farmhouse With Barn, Outbuildings And Gatepiers Attached

A farmhouse with a barn, outbuildings, and gatepiers, dating from the 16th to 17th centuries, and possibly incorporating an earlier core, with alterations in the 18th century. The building is constructed of rubble stone with a stone slate roof, featuring one coped gable. It is arranged as two storeys and an attic, with the house situated to the right of the barn range, both sharing a continuous roof. The barn’s gable is timber-framed, mostly obscured by the slightly lower barn roof and a half-hipped end gable. The house has two coped gables and a continuous ground-floor dripcourse that extends along the barn range. Each gable contains a three-light hollow-moulded recessed mullion window. The first and ground floors have 18th-century openings with beaded surrounds. Under the left gable are three first-floor windows, two blocked, the central one a 12-pane sash, and a broad 16-pane sash on the ground floor, flanked by narrow, blocked windows. Between the gables, a first-floor small 16-pane window is set in a chamfered recessed frame, originally for a mullion window and a circular light, while the ground floor features a six-panel door within a bolection-moulded surround. Under the right gable are a 12-pane first-floor sash and a 16-pane sash below. To the right, there are two first-floor 12-pane sashes, a blocked ground-floor opening, and a three-light hollow-moulded recessed mullion window. The barn range to the left has two blocked ground-floor 2-light mullion windows. Attached to the barn wall are two fine early 18th-century fielded-panelled gatepiers with cornices and urns. The barn’s end wall has a full-height opening. Inside the end barn, a full-height timber-frame end wall of the main range is visible. The end wall of the house has hollow-moulded mullion windows to the attic and first floor. The rear features a chimney gable between the house and barn sections, with the barn exhibiting an 18th-century upper Tudor-arched opening and a 2-light window. The house has chamfered recessed 2-light mullion windows to the left of the stack, one on each floor, and casements elsewhere. A rear wing contains chamfered recessed mullion windows, including a three-light first-floor window to the front, a two-light window without mullions, and a three-light first-floor window to the rear. A door is set in a moulded oak frame with a tripartite 4-12-4 pane sash window to the left. An end stack and end-wall inset slab have four arched openings, possibly dove holes. Low outbuildings form an L-plan range, enclosing a rear court. The house was disused in 1986, and the interior was inaccessible. The interior of the barn range has heavy internal beams, suggesting an original domestic use, and a three-bay 2-purlin roof with tie-beam-and-collar trusses and some windbracing. Rowden is a medieval site, but Aubrey records that the courtyard house with a hall within a moat was burnt during the Civil War.