Yew Tree Farmhouse, attached outbuildings, garden walls and sculptures

Yew Tree Farmhouse, attached outbuildings, garden walls and sculptures

A farmhouse with attached outbuildings, garden walls and sculpture dating to the early 18th century, with early nineteenth-century additions and alterations around 1837. The house and outbuildings are built of coursed rubble sandstone, extensively rendered later, with ridge stacks and Westmorland slate roofs laid to diminishing courses. The garden walls have rubble outer faces with coursed, squared work, ashlar work and carved work to their inner faces.

The building complex forms a T-shaped plan, with an early through-passage plan house to the east, running north-south, extended to the west and south in the nineteenth century. Attached outbuildings stand to the north and east of the house, with attached garden walls and sculpture enclosing a terraced garden to the south.

On the east elevation, the rendered main range shows a two-storey house at the south, extended further south and west. A multi-function outbuilding forms the north part, with a lofted outbuilding as an eastern extension. The house has an off-centre doorway with flanking windows to both floors, all openings featuring painted raised surrounds. An enlarged fire window and a plain doorway (formerly the common entrance to a through passage) are located further right. Windows are mainly sashes, some two-over-two pane, with one opening to the right of the door lengthened with a twentieth-century glazing bar frame. The attached outbuilding to the north comprises five bays with a tall threshing doorway, with a cowhouse section further north featuring an arched doorway, boarded loft door, various slit vents and an enlarged twentieth-century framed window. The attached outbuilding at the south end of the house extends eastwards with a wide central doorway beneath a rough arched head and two small loft openings.

The south elevation shows an early nineteenth-century extension to the house with a central doorway having a massive stone surround and lintel, now fitted with a twentieth-century glazed door. Above is a two-over-two pane window within a painted raised surround. A stone stack sits at the west gable. The south extension extends into the garden and appears truncated, now covered with a sloping twentieth-century sheeted roof. Built of well-finished coursed, squared and v-jointed rusticated masonry, it appears designed to complement adjacent garden structures. A blind arcade of niches decorates the upper part of the west wall. The rear wall of the outbuilding at the south end of the house features steps to a loft door in the east gable. Extending from the south side wall is an attached garden structure; to the left, one supports urns and sculptures of reclining lions, while to the right is an inset relief panel of a female figure flanked by piers supporting urns.

The west elevation shows an elongated gable sloping northwards, incorporating the rear offshut of the nineteenth-century addition with two ground floor openings and a small light to the offshut garret.

The house interior contains the early range to the east beneath a four-bay roof with collar and tie beam trusses, the collars lap-dovetailed. A double purlin roof features a diagonally-set ridge beam. The south end was remodelled in the nineteenth century and aligned east-west with the extension. The north end, formerly accessed via the through passage, contains a blocked eighteenth-century jowelled hearth now enclosed by a twentieth-century partition. An exposed chamfered and stopped oak spine beam and oak joists are visible. A heck wall to the west of the hearth defines the access passage to a blocked doorway from the cross-passage to the north. A shaped oak lintel spans the passage, with a small window to the west wall, formerly the outer wall of the early house, later enclosed within the nineteenth-century offshut. A fielded six-panel door gives access to the entrance of the offshut passage within an architrave surround. The extension at the west end forms a large single room with two doorways to the north wall, both with fielded six-panel doors. The west door accesses a small kitchen with a corner hearth, while the east door accesses the offshut passage and stair. A plain stick baluster winder stair provides access to three first-floor bedrooms with contemporary hearths and one small garret above the offshut.

The attached outbuildings to the north comprise a range of five bays with tie-beam trusses. The southern part rises full height with a stone threshing floor and a single winnowing door to the west wall with vertically boarded double doors to the east wall. Further west, a two-bay cowhouse with overloft is situated. The interior of the outbuilding to the east of the house was not inspected.

The attached garden walls and sculpture enclose a terraced garden to the south of the house, measuring approximately 88 metres by 55 metres. Rubble sandstone walls of varying heights between one and two metres include areas of ashlar masonry, vertical ashlar slabs, shallow buttresses and projecting platforms and plinths supporting an eclectic collection of garden sculptures, including standing and recumbent human figures, dogs, lions, various urns, finials and pedestals. The walling includes a basket-arched stone doorway to the northern perimeter to the west of the house and a flat-topped doorway with flagstone lintel to the south wall. Attached to the south wall and extending into the garden is a tall retaining wall incorporating a flight of steps to an upper level, three recessed bays and a cross-wall at its northern end with ashlar pedestals supporting statues. In the south-west corner is a raised platform enclosed by retaining walls bearing sculpture. The west boundary wall varies in profile, indenting into the garden area with buttresses, flights of steps and flanking walls carrying sculptural items. The wall terminates at a narrow access avenue flanked by the house north wall, with statuary on both sides. The quality of the interior faces of the walling, incorporating niches, buttresses, steps and recesses for now missing oil paintings by Bland, contrasts astonishingly with the plain vernacular character of the outward elevations. The interior walling includes a great many of Bland's sculptures. The walls and sculptures form part of a garden which, together with two garden structures and the house, attached outbuildings and their contents, form a notable group.

The eighteenth-century farmhouse, extended in the nineteenth century, was the home of Thomas Bland (1799-1865), a self-taught sculptor, painter and composer. He created a garden of three terraces which opened in 1837 to commemorate Queen Victoria's accession to the throne. The property represents an eighteenth-century vernacular farmhouse retaining evidence of an early domestic interior and a distinctive through-passage plan form, further extended in the early nineteenth century and enhanced by the creation of garden walling to enclose the distinctive formal garden created by Thomas Bland. The garden is included in the Register of Historic Parks and Gardens.