| Description | White Birch Farm, Warley. Stone house dated 1654.
'Dated 1654. Traditional stone house now rendered. Stone roof, 2 storeys. Thin south front has mullioned windows very long to ground storey. Low wing to east. Very simple altered mullioned windows to north. Barn to west now with asbestos roof'.
(English Heritage listed building description. Date listed 03/11/1954. http://list.english heritage.org.uk/resultsingle.aspx?uid=1313995. Web site accessed 20/12/2013).
White Birch Farm was the subject of an archaeological assessment by Colum Giles in 1980 as part of the WYAS/RCHME Rural Houses Survey'. The photographic images and sketch plan produced by the assessment are held by WYAAS. The fieldwork report is transcribed below:
'This is a stone house, dated 1654. It is of two storey, faces south and has a two cell, gable entry plan with an outshut at the rear.
The south front retains some of its original fenestration: the ground floor windows have recessed splayed mullions, but in the first floor windows the mullions are flush with the surface of the wall. The existing central entry is in the east gable wall, but this has been obscured by later building in this area. The doorway is now an internal opening; it has a decorative lintel, inscribed with the date '1654'.
The door opened into the main room, the house body, alongside the firehood which was sited against the gable wall. Substantial remains of the firehood survive; the stop chamfered bressumer rests upon heck posts, and the mortises in the bressumer reveal the site of the bearer beams which carried the hood. The spine beams of the housebody are stop chamfered against the bressumer. A thick stone wall divides housebody from the parlour. The parlour is featureless, but the existence of an external stack suggests that the room was always heated. The outshut is similarly lacking in original detail; it must have provided a number of service rooms and perhaps the stair'.
(Giles, C. (WYAS/RCHME). 1980. 'White Birch Farm, Warley').
The barn at White Birch Farm has a separate HER record number. See PRN 13092. |