Barns and Attached Outbuildings and Walls at Clipstone Farm

Details

TF 93 SE FULMODESTON CLIPSTONE

111/2/10004 Barns and attached
outbuildings and walls at
Clipstone Farm

GV II


Farm buildings, comprising barn, stable, cart shed with granary over, front yard wall and shelter sheds with loose boxes. Mid-late C18 and early-mid C19. Built for the Holkham Estate and known to be in existence by 1785. Brick, in English bond to barns, patterned with vitrified headers in parts, with pantile roof coverings, the pantiles possibly replacing thatch on the earlier, steeply-pitched roofs to the barn and stable.
PLAN: E-shaped range, aligned east-west and with open side to south, with the barn (of 2 mid/late C18 phases, with earlier section to east) to the north, the stable forming the west wing and connected to the barn by a 5-bay cart shed with a granary above. (The cart shed faces west, and was described as "very old" in 1851). Central and eastern wings are formed by mid-C19 shelter sheds, loose boxes and a turnip house, and have hipped roofs.
STABLE: FRONT (east) elevation facing onto a yard, with a central stable door set between 2 brick pilasters, and windows flanking the doorway and pitching hole to hay lost above. Vitrified headers used for decorative purposes, irregular bond brick. Gables with tumbled brickwork and brick finials. Catslide roof to west outshot, with central doorway, flanked by looseboxes, through to stable. Extension to south with slightly lower roof, possibly the new chaise house with granary above in 1806 building accounts. Pitching hole to gable, and below, double doors and a window opening into a gig house. Later lean-to along the west wall.
INTERIOR: wooden panelling and hay racks remain in situ, together with vertical ladder to replaced loft floor, the arrangement for stalling behind of C18 form. Lantern alcoves alongside doorway. 3-bay roof with queen strut trusses supporting massive through-purlins. South end subdivided to form a separate loft, entered by means of an external staircase, with trap house below retaining tack pegs.
CART HOUSE AND GRANARY: to the north of the stable, of five bays supported by four wooden posts to open west side, the rest English bond brick on wider brick plinth; hanging wooden granary, approached by staircase opening into yard to east.
INTERIOR: some evidence for bins in granary; 5-bay roof with raking struts to principals and butt purlins.
BARNS: Two barns under same roofline make up the north range of the buildings. Eastern barn is the smaller and older (mid C18). Front (south) elevation with 2 double doorways giving access to threshing floors. on either side, and between the doors, lean-to loose boxes which open into the yard. West barn doorway with asymmetrical porch between the loose boxes. East doorway with arched head enclosed by marginally wider porch. Gables with tumbled brickwork matching that of the stable, together with randomly- spaced vitrified headers. Iron ties with ends forming letters T.C. (Thomas Coke) to east gable. North wall, largely enclosed by C20 corrugated iron shed has only blocked breathers.
INTERIOR: interior sub-divided by central cross wall, dividing the two barns. Eastern barn has 7-bay roof with morticed collars and later raking struts, with two tiers of staggered purlins. Western barn has similar roof, but 6 bays and more widely spaced.
YARD WALL: documented as built in 1806, of brick with later C19 alterations and coping. Closes off front (south) of yards, curving back from the western wing to link the fronts of the shelter sheds to east.
SHELTER SHEDS form east side of yard. Open-fronted west elevation with hipped roof at south end with altered end wall. Central range with hipped roof and 2 loose boxes opening to south. Boundary wall to yards at south end with feeding holes above water troughs within yard.
HISTORY: The letters formed by the tie ends in the barn gable, T.C. (Thomas Coke) indicate that it was built for the Holkham Estate. There is no record of expenditure in the buiklding accounts after 1814, when new bullock sheds (possibly in part the surviving shelter sheds) were built; the shelter sheds had been erected by 1850. A rare example of a substantially complete Holkham estate farm, pre-dating the improvements of the mid-C19, and retaining significant early evidence for the housing and management cattle in the yard formed by the L-plan barn and stable ranges; enclosure on the east and south sides was probably achieved by using temporary hurdles or wooden fencing.
SOURCE: Wade Martins S: The Holkham Estate in the Nineteenth Century: PhD Thesis (1975), Vol 2, University of East Anglia.


Listing NGR: TF9733530410

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