Blackdowns Farmhouse

Reasons for Designation

Yes list

Details

EBRINGTON

385/0/10009 TANKARDS HILL 31-MAR-10 Blackdowns Farmhouse

II A farmhouse of circa 1820, incorporating a pre-1700 building and later additions.

MATERIALS: Ashlar Cotswold limestone with timber roof structure and slate coverings. The earlier range is rubble stone with timber beams. There is timber joinery and floorboards, and some stone flagstone flooring. Hand sawn elm floorboards remain in parts of the first floor and attic.

PLAN: A three bay, double-depth building with central hallway and rooms either side on the ground floor. The internal plan form of the early-C19 range is largely unaltered. Later wings extend from the north-east and north-west corners of the farmhouse.

EXTERIOR: The two-storey house stands under a pyramidal roof with oversailing eaves and two stone stacks. The principal elevations to the south-east (three bay) and south-west (two bay) are ashlar stone with fine jointing and early-C19, sixteen-pane sash windows with shallow stone cills. One ground floor window has been replaced with a C20 metal French window. The north-west elevation, facing the farmyard is part-ashlar, part-rubble with a varied arrangement of openings. The rubble elevations are part of an early core of the building and show evidence of a raised roof height and reordered window openings. A drystone wall with stone coping and a door opening is attached to the south-west corner of the farmhouse. Attached to the north are two later wings of lower, two storey height, partly faced in ashlar under hipped slate roofs. They are of lesser interest; the north-west wing of standard mid-C20 design and construction. The farm buildings principally provide a varied farmstead context to the farmhouse.

INTERIOR: Features of note include the main stair with wreathed inlaid handrail, stick balusters and decorative riser; joinery including shutters in reveals, window and door frames, skirting boards and picture rails; cornice mouldings; and floor boards. One bedroom retains a C19 fireplace and button bell, and an iron fixing, possibly part of a bell pull. The C17 range has modified chamfered and stopped beams, C17 joists, stone flag floors and some C17 hand sawn elm floorboards. There is also a wattle and daub wall partly hidden by an inserted stair.

HISTORY: A farm is likely to have stood on this site, on Blackdowns Hill to the west of Stretton-on-Fosse, since at least the C17. Subsequent records show that Thomas Corbett Southam bought the farm in 1791, which later passed to the Dee family in around 1799. The farm was sold to Richard Fletcher in 1824. A tithe map of 1844 shows the farmstead, which was still under Fletcher ownership into the 1850s, and was in mixed arable and livestock use. The farm later passed into the ownership or tenancy of Edmund Gibbs and a reordered farm complex is shown on the 1883 First Edition Ordnance Survey map. The farm has remained in agricultural use throughout the C20 and early C21.

SOURCES Records from The National Archives [Retrieved 11/12/2009] : http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/A2A/records.aspx?cat=188-er13&cid=-1&Gsm=2008-06-18#-1

ER 13/10/2 (1791) ER 13/10/3 (30 April 1824) ER 3/4658 (20 November 1850)

REASONS FOR DESIGNATION Blackdowns Farmhouse, Ebrington is recommended for designation at Grade II for the following principal reasons:

* Architectural: The principal wing is an attractively designed polite farmhouse in the late-Georgian style, possessing its own character as a fashionable re-working of an earlier dwelling. * Historical: Few buildings of this type, from this period of relative agricultural depression, survive in the Cotswolds. It also incorporates an earlier, pre-1700 building. * Intactness: The farmhouse is largely intact, despite some extension and alterations, and its original use is plainly legible. * Interior fittings: Good quality fittings including a central stair and other joinery, and pre-1700 floor treatments add to the building's special interest.

Legacy

The contents of this record have been generated from a legacy data system.

Legacy System number:

507805

Legacy System:

LBS

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