Windmill, Adjoining Barns, Gatehouse And Curtain Wall

WORKINGTON

566/6/74 SCHOOSE 13-DEC-85 WINDMILL, ADJOINING BARNS, GATEHOUSE A ND CURTAIN WALL

GV II* NY 02 NW WORKINGTON SCHOOSE

6/74 Windmill, adjoining barns, gatehouse and curtain wall

G.V. II

Windmill, barn, gatehouse, curtain wall and stack stand. Circa 1800 for John Christian Curwen. Calciferous sandstone rubble with flush quoins, some walls with battlemented parapets and angle pilasters. Mostly under corrugated asbestos roofs, some slate. 5-storey windmill and adjoining large 2-storey barn with single-storey extensions, linked to other farm buildings by polygonal mock curtain wall to right and rectangular mock 2-storey gatehouse to left, enclosing a courtyard on 3 sides. Windmill has tapering doorways on 5 levels and small tapering side windows, all in stone surrounds with horizontal scoring. Simple string course at second floor level with traces at first floor. All floors and sails removed, some traces of wooden flooring structure remains and blocked entrance to stairway in thickness of walls. Barn has gable bridge-ramp entrance and slit vents on 3 levels. Some internal alteration including addition of partial floor. Adjoining mock curtain wall has blocked segmental arch with flanking cross vents and battlemented parapet. Gatehouse has segmental archway providing passage to enclosed yard under cross and lancet vents under stepped battlemented parapets. Lower cow sheds linking with windmill range, have a series of segmental arches under a monopitch roof retaining original roof structure. Immediately to south west and formerly attached, large stone built raised stack yard surrounded by c.45 arched openings identified as "stacks" on a plan of 1808. Forms part of a model farm. John Christian Curwen said in his presidential address to the Workington Agriculural Society, 1809, "the choice was between a fire engine and a windmill. The expense was nearly equal. The fire engine the more certain but the more dangerous. This decided me in favour of the windmill. I can by this machine dress in two hours as much or more than employed four horses a whole day and I expect to thresh only on wet days when I have no other work ... the expense has been very considerable and perhaps greater than was necessary. The machine is well constructed and calculated to perform a great deal of business and does credit to the architect, Mr Dunn of Coldstream." See Transactions Cumberland & Westmorland Antiquarian & Archaeological Society, new series, lxxii, pp133-136. Sources: Plan of Schoose Farm from a survey by L Cash, 1807 (Helen Thompson Museum Workington). Wade-Martins, S. 2002 The English Model Farm: Building the agricultural Ideal, 1700-1914. English Heritage

Listing NGR: NY0140427985