Steading, Blackadder Mains

The Steading at Blackadder Mains, dated 1865, is a U-plan group of single and two-storey farm buildings featuring curvilinear Jacobean gables. The courtyard cattle courts were recently demolished around 1986. The buildings are constructed from rubble, squared and snecked sandstone with ashlar dressings, and some areas are droved. Gablehead arrowslits are present.

The east and west ranges each end in taller T-plan cottages. The southern gable of the cottages has a three-bay Jacobean gable with a door flanked by windows and a window in the gablehead, along with a blank panel above. There is a small window at ground level and a blind window in the gablehead on the outer elevation. A lower gabled porch projects to the centre, featuring a door and window, with an additional window on the return to the south. The gableheads of the two-storey ranges have paired, coped brick stacks. The eastern range is currently being converted to residential use, with evidence of former alterations and modern Velux rooflights. The western range includes cattle byre feeding windows to the right of the outer elevation and irregular doors on the remaining wallplane.

The northern range consists of a cartshed and granary to the west, featuring five segmental cart arches on the southern elevation, with three regularly spaced granary windows above. The rear is blank at ground level, with four regularly spaced granary windows above. The eastern section is a threshing barn with a projecting gabled engine house, flanked by a tapering circular rendered brick stone stalk with a cornice on a tall, square ashlar pedestal in the north-west re-entrant angle. There is a through-door in the otherwise blank northern elevation, with doors and barn windows to the left of the courtyard elevation and arrowslits at ground level to the right.

Originally, the buildings featured timber four-pane sash and case windows, as illustrated in Scott Morton and suggested by the blind gablehead windows. The current windows include a variety of modern cross-pattern glazing, hopper, and plate glass sash and case. The roofs are graded grey and purple slate with green fishscale bands on the Jacobean cottages, although slates are being removed from the corner bays. There are cast-iron, lead, and modern rooflights, as well as ball and spike gablehead finials and metal ridge ventilators.

The interior has been partially seen and includes a small metal grain chute and a larger timber chute in the barn. A low coped rubble boundary wall is present to the south of the eastern cottage.