Summary
Threshing Barn C18 with late C19-early C20 additions.
Reasons for Designation
The Barn at Lower North Park Farm, a C18 eight-bay threshing barn, is listed at Grade II for the following principal reasons:
* Date & plan: a vernacular barn which exemplifies the importance of large, dispersed threshing and storage barns for crops in the C18 and which, with its single west aisle, is unusual in plan;
* Materials: a barn which uses local sandstone and therefore is a contributor to regional distinctiveness, and which unusually retains part of its original brick floor internally as well as much of its original and substantial oak frame;
* Intactness: a barn which although inevitably modified over the centuries survives in a relatively intact form.
History
Although the precise date the barn was constructed remains unknown, architectural evidence indicates that it is of C18 date. It is a large threshing barn, latterly converted for animals and the storage of fodder. The barn is shown on the 1846 Fernhurst Tithe map as a large rectangular building oriented north-east to south-west with a return at the north-east corner, forming an L-shape overall. The north-east extension was still extant in the 1970s creating a yard area to its south but it has since been demolished. The first edition Ordnance Survey map (1898) is the first detailed depiction showing the barn essentially divided in two with two western set-back entrances. Between 1898 and 1912 the southern extension was added, as was a small extension to the north of the northern entrance. The house to the north of the barn, now known as Keeper’s Cottage, is also of this period and was then known as Lower North Park Farm.
Details
MATERIALS
Local sandstone, oak frame, tile roof, weatherboarding.
End of official list entry
