Building record 7972 - Lea Manor Farm, Aldford

<1> English Heritage, 2005, List of Buildings of Special Architectural or Historic Interest (Digital Archive). SCH4666.

6/18 Lea Manor Farm, Farm- building immediately South West of Farmhouse
II
Shippon, early C19 (on Tithe Map for Aldford, 1837). Brown brick in English garden wall bond, with gabled roof of grey slate. Two storeys, almost symmetrical, a model building of its period. Central basket-arched drifthouse with cowsheds left and right; haylofts above, each giving onto the drifthouse through two superimposed round-arched loading openings (to facilitate loading, however full the lofts). To each side of the drifthouse in east wall of the haylofts is a pigeon loft with 6 tiers of 5 nesting-boxes and projecting brick landing-platforms. Beyond the pigeon-lofts loading doors alternate with ventilation panels of honeycomb brickwork, all in basket-arched openings. Mid C20 metal windows under concrete lintels in lower storey; two basket-arched doorways with boarded, ventilated doors. Ventilators in the west wall of the haylofts are in the form of triple-barred crosses.
Listing NGR: SJ4342157888

<2> Professor Nick Higham, 2011, Lea Manor Farm, Aldford: Desk-Based Assessment of the Archaeological Assessment of the Implications of Proposed Re-Development (Client Report). SCH6589.

A desk-based assessment was undertaken in 2011 in advance of a proposed development at Lea Manor Farm. It discusses how the existing layout of the farm developed from large-scale building or re-building campaigns in the nineteenth century, from which the house derives, along with a large, brick-built barn. The barn is grade II listed. Another smaller barn, which is not listed, survives on the same north-south alignment to the north of the listed structure. A further brick-built farm building west of the scheduled barn, which has similar brickwork, was badly damaged by fire during the twentieth century and has been partially rebuilt, while nineteenth-century farm buildings to the east and west of the scheduled barn have been demolished.

The farmhouse is largely rendered and painted. It seems to have been new-built when Bryant mapped Cheshire in 1831, since he named it 'Lea or New Ho. Farm', also it is present on the Tithe Map of circa 1839. Where visible it seems to have been constructed on brick footings and the original core is a double-pile structure, with a valley between a pair of pitched roofs running west-east, with three chimneys. The core of the house is divided, therefore, by weight-bearing walls into two halves, north and south, each of which is internally divided into three by north-south weight-bearing walls which run through. Only one of these six parcels is cellared. There have been numerous alterations to the internal layout, the stair case seems to have undergone considerable re-modelling, some load-bearing walls have been demolished and replaced by beams and bays have been added to the front aspect, the central one apparently resting on the front porch. The outer bays seem to have been present by 1874, although not perhaps in their current form, and the porch, which is based on machine-cut sandstone blocks, was also then present. In 1839 and 1874 the farmhouse included a single-storey northwards extension, now visible in the garden to the north of the house as a stone-paved and tiled area.

The Tithe Map of Aldford, circa 1839, shows the farmhouse with ancilliary buildings. However, the Grade II Listed barn, to the south of the farmhouse, is depicted slightly differently with respect to its current form and location. On the Tithe Map it appears as a smaller building, slightly further east and stopping to the north before the house. There is a range of probable pig sties and other small buildings to the north, linking it to the immediate vicinity of the farmhouse. Incoporated into the southern gable end of the existing barn is a sandstone date stone, underneath the letters ‘EG’, which appears to relate to the period of construction. EG presumably refers to one of two Grosvenor brides, either Eleanor, who married Sir Robert in 1794 and died in 1845, or her daughter-in-law Elizabeth, who married Sir Richard in 1819. However, this date
stone is noticeably more weathered than all the other stone incorporated in the exterior walls of the listed barn (stone was used around doors, for example, for mounting hinges) so it has probably been re-used from an earlier building, perhaps an earlier barn as visible on the Tithe Map. So it appears that this building was constructed later than its listing description suggests. It is present on the OS map of 1874, which suggests it belongs to the period circa 1839-1874. At the latter date it seems to have a narrow external subsidiary aisle running along the western side, which was probably subsidiary animal housing and was apparently part of the original design since a wooden string course is visible on both sides of the drifthouse, at first-floor level, which seems likely to have marked the meeting of a lean-to roof and the main structure. Lead flushing marks a later but since demolished extension immediately north of the drifthouse.