Oxhouse at Dovecote Farm

A cattle shelter of unusual horseshoe-shape plan form, dating to around 1700.

MATERIALS: the oxhouse has walls of local yellow-brown sandstone with repairs and alterations in brick. The roof is corrugated metal. The floors are a mixture of concrete and cobblestones.

PLAN: the building is U-shaped in plan, with the open end of the ‘U’ to the south. The arms of the ‘U’ are formed by two straight ranges running north / south, linked by a curved range at the northern end of the building. The ranges enclose a small yard. The straight ranges have curved corners at the southern ends of the outer elevations. The building is approximately 4.2m wide and 20.5m long, with the total width from east to west including both ranges and the enclosed yard around 16m. The walls are around 0.5m thick. The River Nene is immediately to the west of the building. East of the building a track runs north to Heyford Mill and south to Nether Heyford.

EXTERIOR: single storey with modern metal pitched roof. The walls are generally regularly coursed of mostly rough stone, though with occasional moulded pieces, perhaps re-used. Each range has four horizontal windows, and the curved northern range has a central door. The windows have wide internal splays and have been bricked up. The windows in the southernmost bays are half the width of the other windows. The survival of cast-iron pintle hinges shows that the windows were originally shuttered on the outside. The doorway in the centre of the curved north elevation is blocked with stone rubble externally, and with concrete blocks to the interior.

The elevation of the building fronting the yard is open, but punctuated by timber posts which support the roof trusses and divide the interior into bays. The two straight ranges each have four bays, the curved range has three irregular bays. All the posts to the yard-fronting elevations of the building are modern replacements, though one sits on an old stone pad, suggesting that all the posts may have originally had such pads. There is a vertical niche of unknown purpose recessed into each of the external walls of the straight ranges, roughly in the centre of each elevation.

INTERIOR: cobblestone floors survive in part, elsewhere the internal floor is concrete. The back wall flares out at its base to form a buttress. The roof trusses are split telegraph poles, with modern posts supporting them. There is a single rowlock course of bricks beneath the wallplate. Some of the horizontal timbers are older pine and are re-used, but it is unclear whether they are from an earlier roof to this building. A rough wooden fence is attached to the back posts. There is a section of modern brick wall in line with the front posts fronting the north-west corner of the yard. A separate section of modern brick wall in the north-eastern bay of the curved range abuts the interior wall at right angles.