Description
Fronm S to N, the first room is a shippon and still used as such with wooden partitions in place and a door at the back leading into the next room, also a shippon for cows and calves with loose boxes and slate boskins. This second shippon now houses the fram dogs. Mr Bowes thinks that this was possbily the cart shed befro the coach house was built since the door way has a long linel which includes the window to the left and could have been a bid door for carts. The third room was a stable for Clydesdales with taller kickboards, now housing cows. The peat house is an addiitonal building, now a coal shed, it was used to store peat until 1943. The ground levels in the rooms below rise up slightly to the W.
The first cow shippon and table were not accurately measured since both were occupied by cattle.
WALLS - Mostly surface gathered stone - slate, sandstone and volcanic cobbles with slate thins horizontally laid to form courses (1 layer of cobble between 2 layers of slate). For the majority of the E elevation on the ground floor, the wall has been partly surface rendered. Large horizontal quoins (king stones) and at doors. Mortared, 2 layers of throughs on S gable wall. Square ventilation openings at either gable apex with a slate cill. Peathouse - the added walls are not mortared and are much less coursed, but have some render on the outside.
ROOF - Gabled, slate covered, laid in diminishing courses, sandstone ridge, plastic guttering, plain close verge with slate thins covering purlins. 4 bay, 3 tie beam trusses resting in wall top, pitch pine, machine sawn, slight chamfer. 7 purlins including ridge purlin, carrying rafters, machine sawn, pitch pine. Torched between rafters, roof light.
Peathouse - Catslide roof, slate covered in diminishing courses. 1/2 tie beam truss, 3 purlins, machine cut, torched.
DETAILS
HAYLOFT - The hay barn is built in the style of a threshing barn, there may have been threshing by flail but mainly its use has been a hay barn. Double doors, 7 1/2 plank, 5 battens, pivot hinge, wooden loft latch (one door slpits as a stable door), stone door step, slight overhang of slates above doors as a portch. Square pitching eye opposite door, 4 planks, 2 battens, metal bolt lock, stone outer cill, slate inner cill, slate outer lintel. Written into render on the outside of this hatch is: WB 1939 Rebuilt 16/6/39. Inside is a wooden lintel, carved into this is 1838, and to the side in 1988 LIZ in the plaster. 1 roof light. Floor - Wooden planks.Square trap door into the first shippon below. Small niche to the side of the double doors, stone lintel, slate cill. Top part of the wall inside is rendered, the rest is exposed. Inscriptions in the render: 'TU' on a beam - Tow Usher from Coniston who built the insdie of the barn.
SHIPPON - Door - 9 1/2 plank, 3 batten soft wood, pintle hinges, slate lintel, wooden lift latch, 4 arched gaps in the top of the door, the door steop used is a stone with a hoop, once used to hold down hay pikes. Window - 3 x 2 fixed, 20th century, wooden lintel, slate cill. Floor - copncrete, raised platform for cattle either side of the door, and a central drainage channel which leads to a drain outside the door, and then under the yard to the slurry pit. Walls - the S wall is rendered inside and whitewashed from half way up to and including the ceiling. The wall to the right of the door is a thin partition between the two shippons. Three wooden kickboards on each side of door. At the far end there is a small gate, a kickboard which reaches the ceiling (partition) hiding the door which connects the two shippons, and a trap door in the ceiling to the hay loft above. There is a niche in the back wall and ventilation holes through it. Carved into the door jamb is 'J1 J1' and next to it in the plaster is 'JB WB 1933'. Three beams run across the shippon and continue into t he next room, floor joists and boards lie on top of these. The partition posts are connected to these beams.
SHIPPON for COWS and CALVES - Door - 6 1/2 plank, pivot hinge wooden lift latch, window in door, single pane of glass which opens inwards and rests on two pieces of wood attached to the door, slate lintel. Through stones as quoins, large white quartze stone next to the door. Window - Slate cil, boarded up, shates the doors slate lintel. Floor - Originally cobbled, now some of the floor has been concreted, raised floor at either side of door. Walls - the left wall is a wooden partition, the right and back walls are stone, plastered and white washed. Ceiling continues as befroe, the beams stop in the wall between the shippon and stable, shitewashed. To the left of the door are three partitions with wooden posts supporting slate boskins, these partitions are divided again by smaller slate boskins to provide narrow stalls for calves.
STABLE - Door - As shippon door but with 5 not 4 arched ventilation gaps in door, pintle hinge, slate cill. Window - 2 fixed paes with wooden slats below, slate cill and lintel. Floor - concrete, raised to the left and right. Walls - plastered and whitewashed. Ceiling as before, not painted. Two woode partitions (kickboards) on stone plinths, taller than thoes in the shipopns, pine, not whitewashed. On one parition DB is carved into it. The third has been removed but one can see where it was. There are water bowls at each side of the partitions for the cattle and at the back on the left wall (S end) there is a carved oak saddle rack. There is a turnip cutter - Harrison MeGregor & Co, Leigh Lancashire. Outside is a large boulder, the remaisn of a cheese press with a ring and indentations, this and the turnip slicer are to be sold. Again the slurry collects in the pit by underground drains.
PEATHOUSE - Doors - 1_ 4 1/2 plankd, pintel hinge, wooden loft latch, stone lintel. 2) 6 planks, pintel hinge, glass in top half of door. The peats were thrown down from door 2) into the peat house. Floor - cobbled, now covered in earth and peat, uneven floor. Along the sides of the wall insdie at teh bottom are large slate flags and from the middle of the back wall running into the room is a large rectangular piece of quarried slate, presumably to help with the stacking of the peat. Attached to the peathouse at either end are two walls enclosing a small garden.
(NT VBS Surveyor; 1995)