Dunkirk Farmhouse

Dunkirk Farmhouse is a 17th-century farmhouse situated in the highland area of Wiltshire near Trowbridge, between Southwick and Rode on the Frome Road. The building was altered and extended in the early to mid-19th century, with further late-20th and early-21st century modifications.

The main range comprises a late-17th-century structure of three bays and two storeys, built of coursed limestone rubble with uneven dressed-stone quoins and stone window surrounds. Within this main range is a window displaying late-16th-century characteristics, possibly the only surviving feature of an earlier building phase. Early to mid-19th-century extensions were added to the south (two storeys) and north (single storey) of the main range. A separate single-storey east-west range, probably dating from the late 19th century, is constructed of red brick and is believed to have been a piggery. The pitched roof of the main range and extensions is covered with late-20th-century Bradstone reconstituted stone tiles. Chimney stacks are rendered in the south gable end of the 17th-century main range, dressed-stone in the southern 19th-century extension, and brick in the northern extension.

The main range originally had a two-room plan but is now a single room on the ground floor. The entrance in the west elevation is positioned to the right of centre, featuring a dressed-stone surround, a stone hood on brackets, and a 19th-century four-panelled door. It is flanked by two windows, one to each floor, with stone surrounds and mullions. One stone-mullioned window retains a hood-mould. The east elevation displays six windows (three per floor), all with stone surrounds and mullions, and a continuous stone string course above the ground floor windows. Most current windows are 19th-century date, predominantly 8-pane casements with many fixed sashes. Evidence of a blocked doorway with timber lintel appears on the east elevation of the main range.

The south extension's west elevation contains a single bay with a 16-pane sash window to each storey, both with flat dressed-stone surrounds. Its east elevation retains an original 16-pane sash window with flat dressed-stone surround to the first storey, while the south gable end is blank. The north extension features a UPVC window in its west elevation, with rubble infill indicating a former doorway. Its north façade displays a late-20th-century large wooden-framed 32-pane window, probably replacing an earlier, smaller opening. The brick east-west range has wooden casement windows of late-19th-century date to the south and a late-20th-century wooden 4-pane window in the north elevation. Three late-20th-century dormers pierce the east and west sides of the main range's roof, each fitted with side-hung 16-pane windows.

The ground floor room of the main range features an open fireplace and bread oven at its south end, contained within a slim brick stack of late-18th or early-19th-century date. The contemporary bressumer supports a longitudinal chamfered ceiling beam with a run-out stop at its south end where it meets the fireplace, indicating the ceiling is contemporary with the stack. A lobby of thin timbers with brick infill relates to the west elevation entrance. The roof timbers of the 17th-century main range and the early to mid-19th-century south extension were replaced in the 1990s during loft conversion and now appear wholly of late-20th-century date.

In the 19th-century south extension, the sash window retains shutters, and an original chimney breast now stands partially covered by a late-20th-century stone-built low-level fireplace. In the 1990s, access to an en-suite bathroom for the bedroom in the first storey of the south extension was created by cutting through the 17th-century south gable end.

The farmhouse lies within a rural area defined in the 16th century by dairy farming and grazing, characterised by a pattern of smallholdings in non-nucleated settlement. All current elements of Dunkirk Farmhouse appear on the Ordnance Survey map of 1887. The 1924 OS map shows an additional open-fronted outbuilding to the south of the yard, since demolished. To the east stand three adjoining ranges of former agricultural outbuildings, shown on historic mapping as including an open-fronted store, now converted into a separately owned dwelling but demonstrating their historic relationship to the farmhouse as the northern boundary of an eastern yard. The holding appears on historic OS maps as Dunkirt Farm, with the name Dunkirk Farm apparently adopted later, possibly following the evacuation of Dunkirk in 1940.