Weeke Barton

Weeke Barton is a former farmhouse of mid-17th-century date, possibly a remodelling of an earlier building, located near Bridford. The structure was subject to 20th-century renovations.

The building is constructed of whitewashed rendered cob and stone beneath a slate roof, gabled at the ends and formerly thatched. It features end stacks and a front lateral stack with a tall granite ashlar shaft, plus an axial stack.

The plan is unconventional and difficult to interpret. It comprises an exceptionally long single-depth range six rooms wide, with no existing cross or through passage. The three left-hand rooms and the right-hand room are heated. There is a possibility that a detached kitchen at the right end has been linked to a former three-room and passage house at the left, though this explanation remains unsatisfactory. The three left-hand rooms each have a rear stair projection; the rightmost of these three has thick stone crosswalls and no main roof truss. The extreme right-hand room is a circa mid-17th-century kitchen with a massive, well-preserved smoking chamber. Cross beams supporting the ground floor ceiling are consistent in design throughout the range, except in the room with thick crosswalls. Jointed cruck roof construction survives as far as could be seen at the time of survey in 1987. An axial passage has been introduced to the rear of the room with stone crosswalls. The extreme right-hand room has been converted to a cottage with a long lean-to added at the front, extending across the front of the adjacent room.

Externally, the building presents an asymmetrical eight-window front with seven gabled dormers; the right-end dormer was altered in the late 20th century. A gabled porch to the left of centre stands adjacent to the front lateral stack, possibly marking the site of the front door to a former passage. A long 20th-century lean-to occupies the right end, with a late 20th-century front door, garage, and service room to the cottage at right, which incorporates the former 17th-century kitchen. The rear elevation displays the smoking chamber projection at rear right, two small stair turrets with catslide roofs, and a rear left stair wing. Windows feature 20th-century glazing with timber glazing bars, except for some late 20th-century replacements in aluminium to the right.

Inside, chamfered step-stopped crossbeams survive throughout the ground floor except in one room. The two left-hand rooms contain good granite fireplaces with chamfered lintels and jambs. A 17th-century newel stair to the rear of the left-hand room rises to a small stair landing with crank-headed timber doorframes serving the two left-hand rooms on the first floor. The adjacent room features a stopped half-beam against the right-hand wall with an unexplained corbel arrangement below it. A chamfered arched oak doorframe leads into the axial passage to the rear of the adjacent right-hand room, which has a 20th-century fireplace (probably concealing earlier features) and a chamfered axial beam with diagonal stops. The 17th-century kitchen at the right end retains a massive open fireplace almost the complete width of the house, with a 19th-century bread oven and a massive smoking chamber. The smoking chamber features a granite floor at first-floor level, now concealed, with a square hole in its centre. A framed partition divides the two right-hand rooms on the first floor. The first-floor room second from the left contains a good granite chimneypiece with the remains of a mid-17th-century decorated plaster overmantel. On the opposite wall, a splayed slit window with a timber frame appears to have been designed as a squint into an open hall.

The roof apex was not accessible at the time of survey, but side-pegged jointed cruck trusses appear to survive throughout. The timbers above the left-hand room are not smoke-blackened. The apex of the roof over the centre of the range could be of particular interest.

This is an unusual large early house with many features of interest and others likely to be concealed behind wall plaster.