Scales Farmhouse And Barn

Scales Farmhouse and Barn is a late 17th or earlier farmhouse with 19th-century alterations, and an attached bank barn dating to the late 18th or early 19th century. The building is constructed of Lakeland rubble stone, with the house limewashed externally, and features roughly-hewn dressings, a single rendered ridge stack, plain gables, and Westmorland slate roof coverings laid to diminishing courses.

The farmhouse and barn are aligned linearly, built along a contour on rising ground to the north. Originally a house with an end entry plan, the passage separating the house and outbuilding is now obscured by later remodelling.

The south front of the house is two storeys and three bays, with a 19th-century lean-to porch centering the facade. Plain two-light windows with undivided casements are located either side of the porch. To the right of the right-hand window is a small fire window, now with a two-light casement. A central two-light casement is situated on the upper floor. A doorway to the right of the stack line gives access to a narrow passage at the junction of the house and barn. The attached bank barn is taller, featuring a continuous pentice roof and late 20th-century repairs to doorways providing access to a feed passage and ground-floor cowhouse, which are grouped in the left-hand part of the building. The east gable is blind. The rear elevation has a single two-light opening to the west end of the house, a smaller light to the centre of the upper floor, and a 20th-century dormer above the passage at the junction of the house and the outbuilding. A central double doorway with a pentice canopy supported on timber brackets and vertically-boarded double doors provides access to the loft above the cowhouse.

Inside the house, the original plan has been modified by the removal of a partition between the original firehouse to the east and parlour to the west, but much of the early fabric remains, including heavy beamed ceilings, a hearth recess with a bressumer which has been modified by the insertion of a stair against the rear wall, and a pair of raised crucks supporting double purlins and a ridge purlin. The bank barn has a largely unaltered interior, including timber-framed boskins with stone infill panels, posts tenoned to ceiling tie beams, raised standings with cobbled surfaces, and a paved feed passage. A loft floor is supported on heavy cross beams, with a double purlin roof supported on strutted trusses featuring cross-lapped face-halved principal rafters.

The property is a small farmhouse with an attached bank barn, demonstrating the evolution over two centuries of characteristic Lakeland vernacular domestic and farm building types. Both components retain significant interior detail, with that of the bank barn being a particularly complete and increasingly rare survival.