Reasons for Designation
The cow house at Aqualate Hall is designated at Grade II, for the following principal reasons:
* As a large, substantial and well-detailed cow house of c. 1800, possibly built to house parkland cattle
* Although it has been altered - what is now a free-standing building was once the end of a longer range - the cow house is otherwise little changed, and retains internal fittings including stalls
* As part of an unusually full and architecturally interesting set of estate buildings, including Grade II listed stables to one side of Aqualate Hall, itself listed at Grade II*.
Details
FORTON
603/0/10057 Cow House, Aqualate Hall
15-OCT-09
GV II
A cow house on the Aqualate Hall estate, dating from c. 1800.
MATERIALS: Red brick with a red clay tile roof.
PLAN: The building is rectangular on plan, originally built as part of a longer range, now detached.
EXTERIOR: The cow house is a two-storey, red-brick building with a hipped, red tile roof. In the east wall (originally giving access outward from the farm courtyard) there are three doors, and in the west wall, four. Light and ventilation comes via narrow slit-like windows with stone sills, set level with the door tops, and via two larger windows in the rebuilt north wall. The upper floor of the east and west walls have seven, square, fairly equally spaced 'windows'. To the east the second, fourth and sixth are open, to allow fodder and bedding to be loaded in to what is a boarded attic storeroom. The others are blind, with recessed panels of brickwork pierced by large, lozenge-shaped ventilation panels. All seven of the 'windows' on the west side take this latter form.
INTERIOR: Internally, the cow house is of three relatively large bays. That to the south has a pair of stalls, whilst in the central and northern bays there are three stalls each, facing the dividing panel. In all, this would have accommodated eight pairs of animals. Upstairs, the loft, reach by a vertical ladder and trapdoor, is a single open space. The king-post roof has double banks of staggered butt purlins.
HISTORY: The history of this particular structure is not documented, but on architectural grounds, a date of c. 1800 is likely. The cow house is now a detached building, standing between the Grade II listed stables complex to the west and the walled kitchen garden to the east. On the first edition Ordnance Survey map of 1879 it is clear that, when built, the cow house formed the southern end of a north-south range, which was part of a farm courtyard which lay against the stables complex. This range was later truncated, probably soon after 1879, when what had been an internal wall was reworked to form the new north, gable-end, wall of the cow house, and the north end of the roof was provided with a hip to match that at its south end.
REASONS FOR DESIGNATION: The cow house at Aqualate Hall is designated at Grade II, for the following principal reasons:
* As a large, substantial and well-detailed cow house of c. 1800, possibly built to house parkland cattle
* Although it has been altered - what is now a free-standing building was once the end of a longer range - the cow house is otherwise little changed, and retains internal fittings including stalls
* As part of an unusually full and architecturally interesting set of estate buildings, including Grade II listed stables to one side of Aqualate Hall, itself listed at Grade II*.
