Mants Barn Including Yard Walls

Mants Barn, including the yard walls, is an 18th-century barn with 19th-century outshuts and a foldyard wall. The barn is timber-framed and features weatherboard cladding on a rubblestone plinth, while the outshuts and yard wall are made of rubble brought to course with a brick plinth and quoins. It has a plain clay tile roof that is half-hipped over the barn. The barn consists of three bays with central opposed cart entries, the one at the rear being lower. Outshuts have been added to the outer bays at the front under cat-slide roofs, and the yard walls project forward from the outhouses, forming a rectangular foldyard.

On the north front, the barn retains its original weatherboard inside the outshuts, with double board doors on old frames featuring old hinges and a latch. The right outshut has a door on the right side, while the left outshut has a door that returns to the right. The yard wall is approximately one and a half metres high, topped with saddleback stone coping, and includes gateways on each side and at the centre of the front wall, with re-used old hinges on the right-hand wooden gate.

Inside the barn, the timber frame is virtually intact, featuring a sole-plate, mid-rail, wall-plate, tall close-set studs, wall-posts with large jowels, cyma-moulding at the cart entries, and arch braces to the wall-plate and tie-beams. The roof structure includes queen-post trusses with principal rafters, staggered butt purlins, rafters, and a plank ridge. The west wall-post at the north cart entry has a base-post with a mortice for a base-board. There is a manger inside the right outshut. This barn is a good-quality traditional 18th-century structure, and its added outshuts and foldyard reflect the changing agricultural practices of the 18th and 19th centuries.