Mireside Farmhouse and bank barn

Mireside Farmhouse and Bank Barn

A 17th-century farmhouse with 18th-century alterations, and an attached bank barn of later 18th or early 19th-century date. The buildings are constructed from stone rubble with graduated Westmorland slate roofs. The farmhouse and cottage are partially roughcast rendered. The farmhouse is situated on the north side of a farmyard with the bank barn on the south side.

The farmhouse comprises a two-storey house and an attached two-storey, single-bay cottage forming one dwelling. The south elevation of the house has three bays beneath a pitched slate roof with end gable stacks and large quoins. There is a central entrance with a one-sided gabled porch made from a large stone slab. The entrance has a chamfered oak door frame with a possibly incised curved step chamfer stop to each jamb conforming to a late 17th-century date. The original oak panel door has an upright door handle of similar date. To either side of the entrance is a window with continuous slate drip mould, and three regular first-floor windows are present. The east gable has a corbelled external chimney stack. All windows have uPVC replacement frames and stone sills.

The attached two-storey, single-bay cottage is slightly set back and lower, beneath a pitched slate roof with a right end chimney stack. It has an entrance with a boarded door and a 17th-century handle, and a window to the right with a slate pentise roof and slate drip mould above, together with a single central first-floor window. The right return is unrendered and blind, with a substantial external chimney. The left return, also unrendered and blind, has two windows with slate drip stones to the outshut. The rear elevation has an integral outshut to the west end beneath a cat slide roof with a single ground-floor window with drip stone and a stair window to the upper left; a later quoined outshut is attached to the east.

Interior: The house is entered into the main living room containing a pair of substantial chamfered ceiling beams and exposed ancient rafters. The more easterly beam is thought to be a firebeam that supported a former chimney hood to an inglenook set against the east wall; this area is now occupied by a chimney breast flanked by a full-height cupboard with fielded panel doors. There are hooks in the ceiling and a wooden cheese shelf suspended from the rafters. A two-panel door opens into a rear passage giving access to the western room, which has been extended into the rear dairy outshut. The passage has substantial exposed ceiling beams and rafters, one of which has a moulded decorative edge forming coving. A square cupboard to the north wall of the passage has double wide board doors retaining strap hinges with ends, characteristic of the 17th or early 18th-century. The passage gives access to the ground floor of the attached cottage through a rustic door frame. The cottage has a stone-flagged floor and a substantial chimney breast to the east wall, the site of a former inglenook, with a substantial chamfered beam running front to rear considered to be a fire beam. A chamfered, corbelled beam runs the full length of the west wall supporting the upper floor of the house. An opening through the north wall with a boarded door opens into a larder or dairy with a stone-flagged floor, ceiling hooks and slate benches.

The first floor is reached by an 18th-century staircase within the rear stair outshut. The oak dog-leg staircase has plain square newel posts and turned balusters, lit by a stair window with fielded panelling. A first-floor corridor with wooden floorboards of varying width gives access to three bedrooms in the west end of the house, all with timber floorboards of varying width, all with later removed fireplaces, and some with two-panel doors of 18th-century form with contemporary door furniture. The roof structure has pegged triangular trusses, double purlins and a ridge piece. The single first-floor room of the attached cottage is set at a lower level and has an exposed waney roof structure. Walls are mostly plain and plastered, and floors are mostly 20th-century.

The bank barn is a variant type with its west end embedded into the rising ground. It is built from stone rubble with alternating stone quoins beneath a pitched slate roof. The south elevation has first-floor ventilation slits and a full-height former threshing door, now blocked. To the right there are two openings with boarded doors and slate canopies giving access to the byre undercroft, with a small rectangular window in between, and ventilation holes and through stones to the east end. The east gable has ventilation holes, regular rows of slate through stones, an owl hole to the apex and a ground-floor window with a slab lintel. The west gable has ventilation slits.

The north elevation has a central gabled projecting range with an upper window with a slate dripstone. There is an entrance with a timber lintel through each side wall. To the right of this projection, the upper barn is entered from ground level through a full-height threshing door with timber lintel, which opposes that to the south elevation, with a ventilation slit to the right. To the left of the central projection there is a pentice roof partly supported on a narrow stone wall, through which there is access to a stone stair leading to the upper level, and an entrance down to the byre undercroft.

Interior: The bank barn characteristically has a first-floor full-length threshing floor with storage to either side. It is accessed from ground level at the west end and retains its original pegged triangular truss double purlin roof structure with large stone slabs forming the former threshing floor. There is a ground-floor byre with historic byre fittings including three rows of three timber stalls with crotched, chamfered and stopped posts, and vertical stone slabs forming the stall sides. A central feeding passage and two manure passages are present, with floors of large stone slabs or cobbled surfaces. The north projection contains a loose box with hayloft over. The undercrofts contain cow houses and loose boxes.