Building record LXD 089 - 19th century barn at Fishers Farm

2014: A heritage asset statement was carried out to assess the significance of the barn for conversion into a dwelling. The barn was timber framed and had been heavily altered. Wattle and daub infill still exists on the north and east walls. The buildings are believed to be a typical example of Victorian or earlier age and appear to have stood in their current form for at least 130 years (S1).

2016: The former farmhouse is a 15th or 16th century timber framed structure disguised by an early-20th century façade of Fletton brick, and the redundant farm buildings form a rectangular complex with uniform pantiled roofs arranged around a small cattle yard to the south-west. A single outbuilding that presumably consisted of a threshing barn with an integral stable lay on the site of the present farm buildings facing a yard in front of the house, but no trace of this now remains. The oldest structure of the present complex was probably built at right-angles to this barn in circa 1850, and is a small timber framed shed clad in tarred clay daub that was almost certainly designed as a neat-house (bullock shed). It originally extended to just 6.4 m by 3.8 m (21 ft by 12.5 ft), but had been almost doubled in length by 1882. By that time a pair of open-sided shelter-sheds had been added to its southern wall, creating the present cattle yard, and it may have been partly converted into a barn to replace that shown in 1840 – which had been wholly or largely demolished. An additional structure to the north of the neat-house was extended between 1882 and 1903, and then replaced in circa 1910 by an open-ended lean-to brick shed. A similar open-ended lean-to was added to the western shelter-shed at the same time to complete the complex. Much of the 19th century extension to the west of the neat-house has since been demolished but this early-20th century layout otherwise survives largely intact to illustrate the sophisticated nature of local cattle yard complexes even on holdings of relatively small scale. The uniform external appearance of pantiled red brick is highly characteristic of the region, but the absence of a traditional threshing barn is unusual. The clay-rendered cattle shed illustrates the final phase of vernacular timber framing before it succumbed to mass-produced brick and softwood during the second half of the 19th century (S2).