Farmbuildings Forming The Farmyard To The North Of Week Farmhouse

SX 48 SE MILTON ABBOT

7/213 Farmbuildings forming the farmyard - to the north of Week farmhouse

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Farmbuildings forming the farmyard to the north of Week farmhouse. Probably 1865 (datestone on Week Cottage) and built for the Duke of Bedford. Stone rubble with greenstone dressings and slate roofs gabled at ends. A complete planned farmyard organised round a central dunghouse. The power source is an overshot water wheel. The west range consists of a shippon with 5 entrances under cut stone arches with a cartshed adjoining at the south end with 4 entrances between ashlar stone piers. The north range consists of a single-storey calf-house with a gable end entrance and ventilation slits on the sides adjoining a 2-storey building containing a threshing barn with loft over and a rear granary adjacent to the water wheel. The east range is probably a fattening house with lofts over and is built into the slope of the land to allow direct entrance to the lofts at the rear. The south range consists of a small single-storey block with a small yard in front, said to have been used for housing dogs, and a larger single-storey building, also with a walled yard. In the centre of the yard is a dung house with a roof hipped at ends and, linked to the east range by a covered roof, a fattening shed with a roof hipped at ends. The leat is carried to the wheel in a timber trough carried on brick piers. The farmyard is very complete with a number of characteristic Bedford Estate features including a timber lining to most of the slate roofs. Week is the most complete C19 Bedford Estate farmyard in the parish. The 7th Duke of Bedford was a "devoted improver" (Spring) of the farms on the Tavistock Estate and his policies and practices are described in David Spring, The English Landed Estate in the Nineteenth Century (1963).

Listing NGR: SX4520481117