Church Farm House And Maltings

Church Farm House and Maltings is a farmhouse dating from the late 17th or early 18th century, with attached malting ranges. The complex is located on Church Street in Littledean and represents a largely intact example of an early farm malting operation.

The farmhouse itself is constructed of squared, coursed local stone with a slate roof and ashlar gable stacks. The building is L-shaped in plan, with the front range of single depth and the earliest maltings adjoining the rear range and extending it eastwards.

The main elevation faces west and comprises three bays, two storeys and an attic. A plain string course runs above the ground and first floor window heads, with moulded stone eaves carried up the slopes of the triangular central gable. The window openings have splayed stone voussoirs with projecting keystones and eight-over-eight pane sashes, the ground floor examples fitted with louvred shutters. The gable contains a circular window with alternate projecting keystones. The central entrance features a six-panel raised and fielded door beneath a plain shell hood with pulvinated frieze on carved brackets, covered in lead.

Inside, the entrance hall is stone-paved and retains panelled doors to the principal rooms. A dog-leg stair remains in situ, constructed with turned balusters in full-string form.

The two malthouses and a small linking building form three sides of a courtyard, with the rear elevation of the farmhouse completing the fourth side.

Malthouse No. 1 extends from the northern wing of the farmhouse and dates in two phases from the late 17th or early 18th century, and from the later 18th to early 19th century. It is two storeys with an attic, built of limewashed stone rubble with a clay pantile apex roof. Windows are two-light, four-pane side-hung timber casements of varying sizes. Doors are 18th-century plank doors with wrought iron furniture. The first floor is accessed by an external stone staircase with iron baluster running parallel to the front. At the far eastern end, a louvred cowl rises above the kiln chimney.

The ground floor interior is divided into three rooms. One retains part of its lime mortar growing floor. Another has been altered with an inserted steel lintel to create an open front. The third room is the ground floor of the kiln, which was converted in the early 20th century to a farm abattoir, with its furnace and drying floor removed and a timber beam inserted across its width. All three rooms have massive chamfered beams with plain run-out stops, roughly hewn and showing adze marks. The first floor comprises a growing floor with surviving lime mortar surface and the remains of a timber partition in the form of uprights. These beams also feature chamfers and run-out stops, with stencilled malting numbering. A door provides access to the kiln for moving germinated barley to the drying floor. The attic floor is timber construction. The roof structure consists of simple trusses with staggered, threaded purlins and heavy principal rafters.

Malthouse No. 2 is situated to the south of Malthouse No. 1, and the two are linked by a north-south building that runs from the south of the kiln to the north of Malthouse No. 2. This link building is open at ground floor to provide access to the farmyard, with its first floor forming part of Malthouse No. 2's growing floor, making that building L-shaped. Malthouse No. 2 is rectangular on plan, built of limewashed stone rubble in three bays with two-light side-hung timber casements and a clay pantile roof. A flight of stone steps to the west provides access to the first floor.

The ground floor has a stone flag surface with a drainage channel running along its length toward the northern side. The walls are lime plastered with three moulded rush light holders on either side. Large timber beams with chamfers and plain run-out stops are present, with a hatch giving access to the first floor. Windows to this and the upper floor have internal timber plank shutters with wrought iron hinges. The first floor has a timber floor with the remains of machinery, possibly a winch, toward the eastern end, and is open to the roof. The roof employs king-post structure with a complex dragon beam arrangement where the building turns the corner into the first floor of the link building. Beams carry stencilled malting numbering.

Church Farm House dates from at least the first quarter of the 18th century. The current main front may have been built onto an existing house in 1725. The earlier range of the maltings may date from the late 17th or early 18th century, contemporary with the house to which they are attached. This first, northern malthouse was subsequently extended no later than the 18th century. In the late 18th or early 19th century, a new malthouse was constructed to the south with a north-south link between the two, allowing the existing kiln to be employed with the second malthouse. All buildings were in place in their current forms by the time the tithe map was drawn up in 1839 and have remained unchanged since, as shown on all three epochs of the Ordnance Survey maps for Littledean. Malting continued on the site into the 19th century, after which the malting buildings became agricultural storage.