Corseyard Farm

Corseyard Farm

Possibly designed by G H Higginbottom and dated 1911–1914, this is a model dairy steading built for James Brown of Knockbrex. The complex displays loosely gothic decorative details, including glazed tiling, Roman-style asbestos roof tiles, and faience bricks used internally. The steading comprises a large milk parlour, stables, cartsheds and barn, arranged around a square courtyard with a dominant square tower at its centre. The buildings are of single and two-storey construction in tooled coursed masonry, featuring depressed arch windows and segmental vehicle entrances with bold keystones. The eaves are corbelled with a double row of decorative salt-glazed pantiles set in mortar bedding, ball finials to the angles, and red asbestos roof tiles laid in a diamond pattern with ceramic ridge cresting.

The south range contains a large detached aisled milking parlour with an associated 6-stage tower, arranged in a "Duomo and Campanile" inspired layout. The milking parlour is a long, regular 6-bay aisled building with buttresses and arched lights. It formerly had a lattice-pane leaded and glazed clerestorey, now boarded up as of 1988. Three round-arched entrances face west, with one centrally placed to the east, all with timber lintel hoods. The roof is of depressed arch form with timber bargeboards and overhanging eaves. The interior is lined with glazed faience bricks in a polychrome banded pattern, and the floor is of glazed terracotta tiles. Good quality moulded timber door architraves and doors with glazed panels and fanlights in Art Nouveau domestic style are notable features.

The tower was originally intended as a water tower with grain storage below and some domestic accommodation, but fell into disuse shortly after construction. It is square on plan with raised courses between irregularly spaced floors; some windows are arched, others square. A corbel course at the eaves supports a deep embattled parapet with a circular stair turret at the south-east angle. A timber-encased concrete spiral stair runs the full height of the tower within the south-east angle. Lower-stage floors are of concrete, while some upper floors have had parquet laid. The cornices and timberwork to doors and skirting throughout are unusually elaborate for a farm building; a fireplace was provided at the third stage.

The remaining three sides of the courtyard are enclosed by single-storey and attic buildings with steeply pitched piended roofs. A large barn stands to the north; three cartsheds with arched openings form the west range; and stables, a loosebox and harnessroom occupy the east range, with a fleche ventilator above.

To the west of the steading is a large underground pit, probably a silage pit, with a swept tooled masonry entrance. To the east is a small gable-roofed weighbridge shed of timber with asbestos roof tiles.

The boundary walls to the south are of tooled ashlar with decorative pebble-coping and inset panels of applied shell and pebble decoration. Intermediate ramped piers support the walls. The approach walls to the gateway sweep dramatically inwards to tall square gatepiers.

South-west of the main gates, a walled triangular area forms the former kitchen garden, which is accessed through an eccentric keyhole-shaped gateway with a cross-slit and ball finial. Set within the south-west corner of this garden wall is a small castellated drum turret containing a gardener's toolshed.

A tool shed and former weighbridge structure stands north-east of the main gates. This is a rectangular single-storey building with a deep rendered base course and rendered panel-facing between timbers above. Some red terracotta draper-pattern tiling is present. The roof is of pitched fish-scale tiles with deep dentilled eaves.