Farm Outbuilding East Of High Birks Farmhouse

This is a farm outbuilding located east of High Birks Farmhouse, dated 1695, with 19th-century alterations and additions. It is constructed from watershot Lakeland stone rubble with limestone quoins, some of which are monolithic, and limestone dressings. The building features coped gables with kneelers and a finial, topped with a Westmorland slate roof laid to diminishing courses. The structure has a bank barn plan and is linear in form, providing waggon access from the high ground at the rear and cattle standings on the ground floor at the front.

The south elevation is two storeys high with an overloft, consisting of five bays. There is a long lean-to at the west end and a lower in-line gabled addition at the east end. A shallow canopy on the ground floor is supported by timber corbels and plates, sheltering cowhouse entries and feed passage doorways. The massive stepped plinth is interrupted by five plain doorways with whitewashed surrounds. Two of the doors have ventilation slits, two are subdivided horizontally, and one has been converted into a window. There are also two small window openings with glazing and louvres.

At the west end, there is an inscribed circular slate in the wall below the canopy that reads 'W.S.1695'. Above one of the doorways, two courses of projecting throughstones can be seen, along with a former winnowing doorway that has been enlarged and glazed, situated below a slated canopy. The north elevation is single storey with a full-height double doorway and boarded doors beneath a curved timber lintel, all enclosed within a shallow slated canopy. A lean-to to the west features a double doorway below a timber lintel. The south wall of the lean-to appears to be nearly contemporary and has doorways at different levels.

The interior has not been fully inspected, but it has been observed to include a boarded threshing/loft floor and strutted roof trusses that support a double purlin roof. This building is recognized as one of the earliest known examples of what is considered to be an 18th-century building type.