Farmhouse, Agricultural Building With Cheeseroom, And Threshing Barn At Moorfields Farm

MOORFIELDS FARM: FARMHOUSE, AGRICULTURAL BUILDING WITH CHEESEROOM, AND THRESHING BARN

A substantial farmstead largely dating from the later 18th century, consisting of a double-pile farmhouse, an agricultural building with integral cheese room, and a timber-framed threshing barn. The site plan comprises the barn and agricultural building set at right angles, forming the northern and western sides of a loose farmyard bounded to the east by the remains of earlier shelter sheds, with the house positioned further to the west and oriented east-west.

The farmhouse is constructed in red brick with a plain clay tile roof and is double-pile in plan, with a central entrance hall flanked by rooms to left and right and service accommodation to the rear. The main elevation presents two storeys and three bays, with a 20th-century porch covering the entrance doorway. The original entrance is flanked by segmental-headed rectangular window openings now containing replacement windows, with brick cogging to the eaves and gable-end stacks with external chimney breasts. An eastward single-bay extension with lower roof adjoins the main range, together with a later lean-to across the bay. The rear elevation retains similar window openings to the front, with some 19th-century timber casements surviving, some containing rectangular leaded panes. A wide door opening to the western end and further additions behind the eastern extension are evident.

Internally, the entrance porch provides access to the original entrance doorway with fanlight. The entrance hall has a terracotta tiled floor and features a modest closed-string stair of mid-19th-century date with moulded handrail and panelled doors to principal rooms. Throughout the house, doorcases retain 18th-century mouldings, with 18th-century panelled doors to principal rooms and plank-and-batten doors elsewhere. The ground floor rear range retains its dairy with stone work surfaces and ventilation, pantry with similar stone surfaces, and kitchen with 19th-century range. All ground-floor rooms possess chamfered ceiling beams with lamb's-tongue stops. Two first-floor rooms in the main range contain small cast-iron fireplaces. The rear range roof comprises trusses formed from large-section lapped principal rafters with single purlins and queen struts, all pegged. The western extension contains ground-floor storage and food-processing rooms and a large 19th-century fireplace and chimney breast, now boxed in.

The agricultural building is oriented with its gable end to the front of the plot, running north-south. The ground floor is constructed from coursed rubble stone with large stone quoins; the upper portion is brick with cogging to the long elevation. The southern range rises to one-and-a-half storeys, whilst the northern end is a single-storey range. The one-and-a-half-storey range is accessed by external stone steps leading to the first-floor cheese room, which retains some cheese racks, a queen-strut roof, and an unglazed timber window with diamond mullions, now partly open to the roof space of the lower range behind.

The ground floor features a wide doorway now reached from the lobby of the house extension, leading into the agricultural portion. A timber partition divides a bay at the south, with an open shed beyond, both whitewashed, indicating the shed may have served as a milking area. The ceiling carries a large-section chamfered beam with lamb's-tongue scroll. The northern shed has a wide double doorway at its north end, a later concrete floor, and mangers.

The barn is a 18th-century four-bay threshing barn constructed from square timber framing with brick infill. All elevations feature cruciform ventilation holes with decorative patterning in the gable ends, beneath a clay tile roof. The threshing floor is flanked by wide opposing double doors with pennant sandstone kerbs.

Internally, the western bay is floored with a very heavy chamfered ceiling beam and an inserted stone wall at the eastern end. The south side accommodates later inserted doorways into the ceiled bay. The internal framing is largely intact, with a roof formed from trusses of paired principal rafters, tie beams set on jowled posts, twin trenched purlins and queen struts, with angled wind braces to the end bays.

The site originated in the later 18th century with the double-pile farmhouse, agricultural building with cheese room situated to the east, and threshing barn to the north-east, together with a further range of agricultural buildings running north-south incorporating probable shelter-shed facing, creating ranges on three sides of a loose courtyard with a detached house to the west. During the 19th century, the house underwent minor modifications including new segmental-arched windows and inserted 19th-century fireplaces, and received extensions in two phases linking it with the adjoining agricultural building. During the later 20th century, the farmstead expanded with a detached two-storey dairy and storage over, south of the range adjoining the threshing barn, and an agricultural building, probably a shelter shed, to the west. By the mid-20th century, the 18th-century range of buildings to the south of the threshing barn had become dilapidated, prompting the addition of a steel-framed, asbestos-roofed barn covering the farmyard and shelter sheds, together with further lean-to sheds and repairs and infill to other agricultural buildings. The farm remained in use until the early 21st century.