Steading, Brough Farm, Westray

Steading, Brough Farm, Westray

A large later 19th-century steading built around an E-plan arrangement, with a central detached range adjoining a main U-plan block, forming two open-sided yards to the southeast. The complex combines single storey, single storey with loft, and two-storey sections constructed from coursed rubble, partially harled, with coped gables.

The northeast range, built into sloping ground and largely two-storey, houses a granary, barn and bothy. It features steps ascending to the first-floor bothy entrance with a boarded timber door. At this level, the range adjoins a small dovecote with two rows of four flight holes and nesting boxes. An L-plan lean-to on the outer right formerly housed a water wheel for driving the threshing mill. An opening in the right return admits water from an adjacent lade running parallel to the range. The ground floor contains two windows to the far left, with a row of nine regularly spaced small windows to the first floor. The interior retains a wheelhouse with substantial threshing machinery and much of its gearing system intact as of 2000, along with a bothy fireplace at the southeast end.

The southwest range contains stables and byre, with a partial loft. Internally, it preserves timber posts supporting mangers and hayrack for cattle in the byre section, and timber stalls with hayrack for horses in the stable section at the northwest end.

The northwest range, single storey and containing a byre, features a rectangular-plan projecting section with a separate gabled roof to the left of centre and two large entrances with a window between them. A later rectangular-plan concrete addition with single pitch roof adjoins to the right. An opening with a two-leaf boarded timber door to the gable end features an opening immediately above.

Windows throughout consist of a variety of two and four-pane fixed or removable timber frame and corrugated perspex examples, with some missing. The northeast range retains timber boarding and internal shutters, including to the granary. The roofs are Welsh slate, with the central range piended (piended gable to the northwest) and only sarking remaining to its southeast section. Gablehead stacks with band courses stand southeast of the northeast and southwest ranges; a later coped ridge stack with single round cans crowns the central range.

The lean-to addition to the central range is occupied by a byre. Internal divisions and fittings have been removed from the northwest range.