Windmill, Adjoining Barns, Gatehouse And Curtain Wall

The site comprises a windmill, adjoining barns, a gatehouse, a curtain wall, and a stack yard, dating to circa 1800 and built for John Christian Curwen. The buildings are constructed of calciferous sandstone rubble with flush quoins, some walls featuring battlemented parapets and angle pilasters. Roofing is mostly corrugated asbestos, with some slate.

The windmill is a five-storey structure with tapering doorways on each level and small, tapering side windows, all within stone surrounds with horizontal scoring. A simple string course is visible at second-floor level, with traces at first. The floors and sails have been removed, though remnants of wooden flooring structure and a blocked entrance to the stairway within the wall thickness remain. The adjoining two-storey barn has a gable bridge-ramp entrance and slit vents on three levels. Some internal alterations have occurred, including the addition of a partial floor.

A polygonal mock curtain wall connects to the barn and windmill range, and a rectangular mock two-storey gatehouse stands to the left, enclosing a courtyard on three sides. The curtain wall features a blocked segmental arch with flanking cross vents and a battlemented parapet. The gatehouse has a segmental archway providing passage to the enclosed yard, with cross and lancet vents under stepped battlemented parapets. Lower cow sheds, linking with the windmill range, exhibit a series of segmental arches under a monopitch roof retaining its original structure.

Immediately to the southwest, and formerly attached, is a large stone-built raised stack yard containing approximately 45 arched openings, identified as “stacks” on a plan of 1808. The entire complex forms part of a model farm. John Christian Curwen stated in his 1809 presidential address to the Workington Agricultural Society that the windmill was chosen over a fire engine, citing its efficiency in processing grain. He credited Mr Dunn of Coldstream as the architect. A plan of Schoose Farm, surveyed by L Cash in 1807, is held at the Helen Thompson Museum in Workington.