Central Barn, Home Farm, Sumburgh House

Central Barn, Home Farm, Sumburgh House

A farm complex of late 17th century origin, centred on a farmhouse with substantial 18th and early 19th century ranges of barns, grieve's house, and kiln arranged around a quadrangle.

The farmhouse is a two-storey building with attic, arranged on a square double-pile plan with three bays. The walls are harled with cement margins. The west-facing principal elevation is symmetrical with a gabled porch projecting from the centre bay, though the doorway in the north elevation has been infilled. A modern window has been inserted at ground floor in the left bay. The upper floors have regular fenestration, with gabled dormers breaking the eaves at the second floor. The east (rear) elevation is asymmetrically fenestrated with three bays: a door centred at ground floor, a window offset to the right in the adjacent bay, and regular windows elsewhere except for a blank section at first floor in the centre bay, flanked by windows. The north and south side elevations feature irregularly fenestrated double gables. Windows are mainly four-pane timber sash and case types. The roof is covered in corrugated sheet material with concrete skew copes to gables and dormers. Harled three-flue apex stacks sit at each gable, coped and fitted with circular cans.

The barns are predominantly constructed of rubble with corrugated sheet cladding to roofs. The central barn runs north-south and forms the spine of the complex, with a vertically-boarded timber door in its partially exposed east elevation and brick-infilled windows flanking. A barn adjoining to the south is oriented at right angles, with a two-bay east gable of stugged squared and snecked sandstone with twelve-pane timber fixed-lights and a slated roof. The south elevation is partially obscured by an adjoining L-plan building comprising an east-west oriented barn with a slated grieve's house projecting south at its east end. This section features a north elevation with vertically-boarded timber doors flanking a four-pane timber sash and case window, a door centred at ground in the west gable with a small window to its right, and a flagstone rubble stair and platt leading to a vertically-boarded timber loft door at first floor. The grieve's house, gabled and advanced at the right of the south elevation, has a single flue coped apex stack with an octagonal can and a two-bay east elevation with a twelve-pane timber sash and case window in the left bay and a vertically-boarded timber door with a two-pane fanlight.

A kiln barn adjoins the north end of the central barn, oriented at right angles and projecting east, with a partially rebuilt east gable and a two-tier circular rubble kiln centring the west gable beneath a stone slab roof. A gabled barn to the east encloses the north side of the quadrangle with flagstone rubble walls and stone slab roof, featuring two widely-spaced bays in the south elevation with a vertically-boarded timber door in the left bay and a four-pane fixed-light in the right, plus rubble infill and a vertically-boarded timber door with a three-pane fanlight to the east gable.

A single-storey barn with loft, twelve bays long and running north-south, encloses the east side of the quadrangle. It has random rubble walls and purple slate roof, with a sixteen-pane timber fixed-light in the outer right bay, a blank bay to the left, segmental cart-arches in three bays to the left, and timber doors and partially infilled windows in the left bay. A single-storey three-bay gabled barn to the rear of the farmhouse has flagstone rubble walls and stone slab roof with an asymmetrical east elevation: a window in the left bay and round-arched cart-arches in the centre and right bays. The four-bay rear elevation has a vertically-boarded timber door in the outer right bay and small square windows in the left bays.

Random rubble walls enclose a garden to the west of the house and flank the drive.