| Description | Birks Farm, Slaithwaite (SE 05862 14554). 17th century house with evidence of earlier timber framing.
'Early C18. Part altered. House, barn and former cottage now barn. Millstone grit/ hammer dressed stone and rubble. Plinth. Pitched stone slate roof. Old ashlar chimney to east barn with tabling. 1/2 storeys. House: South East elevation: Ground floor; One 4 light stone mullioned window (double chamfered) (2 mullions removed). First floor; One 5 light stone mullioned window, (early C19). North West elevation: Blocked door with large lintel. Pitched one storey extension. South East barn: single storey (former cottage). South East elevation: Door with large chamfered lintel (probably original door). Sill has water drainage channels. One modern barn door. One 4 light stone mullioned window (double chamfered). South West elevation: Ground and attic levels each have one 2 light stone mullioned window (ground floor window blocked and part concealed below ground level). North West elevation: One 6 light stone mullioned window (2 mullions removed) (2 lights blocked). Interior: The barn is of cruck construction. There is a single cruck truss with pegged joints. One blade is on a stone footing, the other is set into the wall. The tie beam has been removed but there is a collar and two large purlins and ridge beam. At the east gable of the barn is an impressive chimney with monolithic chamfered lintel and stone quoins. It has stepped breast. The chimney indicates that the cruck building could have originally been used for domestic purposes. South West barn: Small door with large lintel. Barn door with quoins and rounded corbels supporting large lintel. Lean to on west side with first floor small windows with tabled sill. There are several small holes drilled into quoins along the south elevation of the building for apparatus used in the drying of wool: 'Wuzzing'.'
(English Heritage listed building description. Date listed 11/07/1985. http://list.english heritage.org.uk/resultsingle.aspx?uid=1266692. Web site accessed 09/04/2013).
Colum Giles made and archaeological assessment of this house as part of the WYAS/RCHME Rural Houses Survey in 1981. The field work report is transcribed below:
'This is a stone house, dating probably from the late 17th century and incorporating a single cruck truss that possibly belongs to an earlier house. The house faces south and has a linear plan of three cells with a 19th century laithe attached at the west end. Apart from the laithe, there seems to be three periods of stonework; the earliest is found in the central area, with the end cells being substantially of 19th century date.
The central cell is built of coursed rubble masonry, quoined at the junction with the east cell. There is a marked break in the masonry between central and western cells, but this break is not marked by quoins and may be the result of the insertion of doorways into the south wall. The west cell has been virtually rebuilt in the 19th century, but that it was originally of one build with the central cell is suggested by the presence of quoins at its south west angle; it would appear, therefore that the area was rebuilt as a two storey cell in the 19th century, the quoins of the original build rising only to the eaves height of the central cell. Both central and western rooms display windows with recessed and splayed mullions. The 17th century work gave a single storey range to the two rooms. |