Broadley Farmhouse

Broadley Farmhouse

Farmhouse, probably dating to the late 16th and 17th centuries on an earlier site, remodelled and extended in the late 18th and/or early 19th centuries, with 20th-century alterations and repairs. The building is constructed mostly of slate rubble with some dressed slate; the rear wall is partly slate hung. The roof is covered in slate, with the right-hand end hipped and the left-hand end gabled (though formerly hipped), and hipped where the left end of the range projects.

The chimney stacks show a complex history: the left-hand gable end has a rendered stack; centre left there is a brick axial stack; to the right of centre a projecting front lateral stack with rebuilt shaft and top; and a right-hand end stack (now an axial stack). A large rear lateral stack features a substantial slate shaft with granite quoins.

The plan of the building is not entirely clear in its original and subsequent development. The existing house forms a very long, single-depth structure with five rooms. The left-hand (west) two-room section has a central entrance and appears to be an early 19th-century addition or possibly a conversion from a farm building of that date. Of the remaining three rooms, the left-hand room is slightly deeper, possibly due to later rebuilding when a lateral stack was added at the back. At the front, a turret overlaps the left-hand and central rooms; it is said to have formerly contained a garderobe shaft before late 20th-century alterations. A solid wall separates the left-hand room from the middle room. The middle room has been divided by 20th-century partitions with an inserted stair, though the front features a lateral stack and may originally have had a through passage at the right-hand end (indicated by opposing front and back doorways). The large right-hand room contains a very large fireplace at the right-hand gable end with a curved wall resembling a newel stair shaft to the south of the stack. At ground level in the front wall of the right-hand room is a small slanting entrance that may have served as a conduit to supply water to the house; this conduit may have continued along the front of the house beneath the garderobe. The adjoining range of farm buildings to the north may be integral with the right-hand end of the house, or its construction may coincide with a remodelling of that end.

The exterior is two storeys in a very long, asymmetrical range of approximately twelve windows. The six-window range to the left projects forward. The three symmetrical windows to the left are in the early 19th-century extension and feature 3-light casements with glazing bars; the ground-floor windows have cambered red-brick arches. A central doorway with a glazed and flush-panel door is sheltered by a late 19th or early 20th-century wooden lattice porch; the window above the porch is a later single-light casement with glazing bars. To the right of this projecting range, the windows are similar 3-light casements on the first floor and a large 5-light window on the ground floor. To the right of this is the projecting garderobe tower with a small casement on both floors and a blocked window slit high on the right-hand return. The long range to the right is set back and has a projecting lateral stack left of centre, followed by various asymmetrical diagonal 19th and 20th-century casements and a 20th-century glazed door to the right of the lateral stack. At the extreme right end is the end wall of the farm building, which returns at right angles to the rear.

The rear (north) elevation is recessed to the right (west) and features a 20th-century open porch in the angle. At the centre there is a large lateral stack rising from a dressed slate wall. To the left (east), the ground floor is stone rubble with slate hanging above, concealing concrete block rebuilding. The left side has two 20th-century doors and all 20th-century casements; to the right, the windows appear to be 19th-century 2-light casements on the first floor. A doorway left of centre has a slated canopy in shaped brackets, one of which has been renewed. A flight of external stone stairs leads to a first-floor doorway on the left.

Interior features include, in the right-hand (east) end room, two large chamfered cross beams with head stops; the joists have been replaced. An ovolo-moulded lintel sits over the rear (north) window. In the right-hand end wall is a very large fireplace with dressed slate jambs, a large chamfered wooden lintel with hollow step stops, and an oven. The third room from the left-hand (west) end, which is the end room of the old range, has a large lateral fireplace on the rear wall with reused roof-moulded granite jambs and a square-section wooden lintel.

The entire roof structure appears to have been replaced in the late 18th or early 19th century; none of the partitions rise into the roof space. The roof is constructed of roughly cambered collars lapped and pegged to the face of straight principals, which are halved and pegged at the apex.

Broadley was a Saxon estate mentioned in the Domesday Book.