Building record 15630/2 - Farm Buildings at Bulkeley Grange

<1> Historic England, 2011, The National Heritage List for England, 1138613 (Web Site). SCH6528.

Grade II Listed multi-purpose farm buildings and stables, mid C19. Red brick with slate roof. "U" shaped plan, 2 storeys. The south-east building has four open arches with stone springers. The centre building has wide arched opening with springers and keystones to arch and a gable above. The stables are in the south-west building. Stone dressed quoins and openings. Narrow boarded doors and metal windows. Square window-shaped pitch holes with stone heads and sills at loft level. Symmetrical pattern of vent holes in straight line above first floor level. Barge boards to gables. Steep pitched roofs with triangular vents.

<2> Mel Morris Conservation, 2013, Bulkeley Grange, Bulkeley, Malpas, Cheshire: Historic Building Appraisal and Statement of Significance, R4612 (Client Report). SCH9256.

Heritage statement produced in 2013 for the farm buildings at Bulkeley Grange, Bulkeley. The study includes a site assessment and inspection of the buildings, including all roof spaces. The complex includes two listed buildings - the grade II listed farmhouse and the group of model farm buildings, also grade II listed.

Bulkeley Grange was purpose-built as a model farm, developed at the peak of the development of model farmsteads in England and specialising in providing good cattle accommodation. The model farm was built, as were many of this era, in the pursuit of efficiency, with a flow between buildings designed to follow the natural flow of materials through the farming processes.

Bulkeley Grange was owned and built by Thomas Brassey, the world famous engineering contractor, responsible worldwide for the construction of railways at the height of the railway-building boom, although he was not a qualified engineer but a collaborator and an organizer of men on a huge scale, with a background in surveying. With the engineer, William Mackenzie, he established the “Mackenzie and Brassey” company which became the largest contracting firm in the world. Other eminent engineers and architects with which Thomas worked include George Stephenson, Robert Stephenson, Joseph Locke and Sir Joseph Paxton. The farm was, however, occupied and managed by his youngest brother, Robert Brassey. Although the designer or architect of the building is unknown, it is likely that he was a local architect - this farm complex is particularly architecturally distinctive, with a co-ordinated scheme of constructional details incorporating brick and stone dressings, of fine quality. There are some features of high quality, such as the weathervane, which anticipate the “Arts and Crafts” movement. The buildings are relatively straightforward, large in scale, but restrained in overall form and we can only guess that they were equipped with machinery that was at the cutting edge of technology. However, the farm machinery has been removed, and the spaces devoted to machinery and the specialised production processes have been remodelled internally, so interpretation of the function of these spaces is severely restricted. Where the plan form is intact it is of high value.

The farmhouse and range of farm buildings first appear on the 1872 1:2500 Ordnance Survey map where they are illustrated as a U-shaped courtyard range with some additions. Thomas Brassey appears to have built Bulkeley Grange between 1861 and 1870, but did not intend to live in the property. At the time of the Tithe map, of circa 1842, the land was tenanted to the local farmer, Thomas Lewis. The plot on which Bulkeley Grange was built was identified as “Back Town Field”. The previous farm owned by Thomas Brassey (and occupied by Thomas Lewis) lay close to the road. In replacing it with Bulkeley Grange, a detached range of farm buildings was retained and appear to have been adapted for horticultural purposes in association with the new farmhouse by 1872. The Tithe map also identifies Bulkeley Old Hall, which was located to the north-west of the present Grange.

Robert Brassey was a gentleman farmer. Farm and farmhouse were separated and given independent access, the farm approached from a purpose-built linear access track to the north and the farmhouse approached from a winding carriage entrance to the west. However, there was interdependency between buildings, the farmhouse being adapted with dairying facilities and a cheeseroom, and the farm complex containing the trap or gig house and both heavy draft horses and horses for the family’s use. The function of the model farm building revolved around the approach into the site from the north and the orientation around the central courtyard. It was built as a complex with integral functions contained within the one group. It was laid out with a commonly accepted orientation of horse accommodation ranged down one side (in this case west) and implement accommodation down the other (in this case east) with central processing area on the warmer south side. There was no separate barn for threshing corn or for storing hay and all of the loft space for all three ranges appears to have been devoted to the storage of hay and straw, and possibly some for feedstuffs and grain. It appears from all the evidence that this farm was specialising in cattle rearing and dairy usage, not arable farming.

The external elevations of the buildings combine the use of English garden wall bond brickwork (an economic bond of four rows of stretchers to one of headers) with stone dressings of high quality. The larger spans have deep segmental brick arches, with stone quoins to the jambs, and some arches are emphasised with a central keystone and a fielded panel. Circular pitching eyes are created by combining semi-circular arched brick lintels with stepped quoined semi-circular stone cills in a distinctive style. Oeil-de-boeuf dressed stone windows are located in the centre of the central gables. All of the openings have shaped stone lintels, the doorways with quoined and chamfered surrounds and distinctive pointed lintels and the windows with stop chamfered soffits and all window openings have deeply weathered stone cills. The Welsh slate roofs contain high-level triangular louvred vents and combine half-hips with steep, 50-degree pitch gables,