Barn And Horse Engine House Immediately To The South West Of Leigh Barton

The building is a barn and adjoining horse engine house located immediately to the southwest of Leigh Barton. The barn dates from the late 16th century to early 17th century and was re-roofed in the 19th century. The horse engine house is likely from the mid-19th century, built around the same time as the remodelling of Leigh Barton.

The barn is constructed from stone rubble and features a slate roof that is gabled at both ends. It has two large gabled porches with entrances under flat stone arches, and it is floored only at the right-hand end. The front elevation retains its putlock holes, but the porch gables and upper masonry courses appear to have been rebuilt. The hexagonal horse engine house is attached to the front right of the barn and has four rectangular entrances with stone rubble piers between them, along with wide slit windows under the eaves.

Inside the barn, the roof has been replaced with 19th-century king post and strut trusses, and there is no visible evidence of the earlier roof structure except in the porches, which each retain one truss with principals that have curved feet, a cambered collar, and mortises for two tiers of threaded purlins. A large chamfered stopped beam between the inner walls of each porch seems to have replaced a stone arch, of which only the stubs remain. The barn was part of a planned farmyard associated with the Bedford Estate, built in the mid-19th century to the southwest of Leigh Barton, which may have originally been one of the endowments to Tavistock Abbey.