Brightley Farmhouse

Brightley Farmhouse is a 17th-century farmhouse, likely with earlier origins, and undergoing alterations at the time of survey in 1986. It is constructed of local stone rubble walls with some cob under the eaves, and has a gable ended roof covered in asbestos slate. There are two rendered stone rubble stacks: one projecting from the left gable, and the other axial and offset from the ridge, both having stone dripmoulds. The original design likely featured a two-room plan with a central through passage, the left-hand room heated by a gable end stack and the right-hand room by an axial stack, possibly incorporating a newel staircase in a shallow rectangular projection to the front. The front facade is asymmetrical with three doorways, the central one presumably leading to the passage and featuring stone quoins on its left side. A shallow rectangular projection likely housed the newel staircase. Window openings are present above the central doorway and to the left of the left-hand doorway, though the windows themselves have been removed. At the rear, a blocked doorway is located centrally, opposite the front central doorway, with window openings on each floor to its right and a narrower doorway to its left, containing a 17th-century wooden doorframe with chamfered interior edges. Two original roof trusses remain over the left-hand room, featuring straight principal rafters, trenched purlins, collars halved on with dovetail joints, a morticed apex, and diagonal notched ridge. The gable end fireplace has a roughly chamfered wooden lintel and a cloam oven with a door on the left side. The axial fireplace features a wooden lintel with a narrow chamfer and run-out stops, a roughly chamfered granite jamb to the right, and stone jambs to the left. The site of Brightley was formerly the location of a religious house founded in 1133, but abandoned in 1141, and its inhabitants relocated to the site that became Ford Abbey.