Description
Possibly G H Higginbottom, dated 1911-1914. Model dairy steading built for James Brown of Knockbrex. Loosely gothic decorative details, including glazed tiling, Roman-style asbestos roof tiles, faience bricks internally. Steadings consisting of large milk parlour, stables, cartsheds and barn, laid out around square courtyard, with dominant square tower. Single and 2-storey buildings of tooled coursed masonry, depressed arch windows and segmental vehicle entrances, all with bold keystones. Corbelled eaves with double row of decorative salt-glazed pantiles set in mortar bedding, ball finials to angles, red asbestos roof tiles in diamond pattern, ceramic ridge cresting.
S RANGE: large detached aisled milking parlour with associated 6-stage tower in "Duomo and Campanile" inspired layout. Milking parlour: long regular 6-bay aisled building with buttresses and arched lights, formerly with lattice-pane leaded and glazed clerestorey (now, 1988, boarded up) 3 round-arched entrances to W and one centrally placed to E with timber lintel hood, depressed arch roof with timber bargeboards and overhanging eaves. INTERIOR with glazed faience bricks in polychrome banded pattern, floor with glazed terracotta tiles, good quality moulded timber door architraves and doors with glazed panels and fanlight in Art Nouveau domestic style.
TOWER: originally intended as a water tower with some grain storage below and some domestic accommodation, but was disused soon after erection. Square on plan with raised
courses between irregularly spaced floors, some arched windows, some square. Corbel course at eaves with deep embattled parapet and circular stair turret at SE angle. Timber encased concrete spiral stair runs the length of the tower in the SE angle. Floors are of concrete to lower stages, some have had parquet floors. Throughout the cornices and timberwork to doors and skirting are unusually elaborate for a farm building, a fireplace was provided at 3rd stage.
To remaining 3 sides of courtyard, single storey and
attic buildings with steeply pitched piended roofs. Large barn to N; 3-cartsheds with arched openings to W range; stables, loosebox and harnessroom to E range with fleche ventilator above.
To W of steading is a large underground pit, probably
a silage pit, with swept tooled masonry entrance. To the E of steading is a small gable roofed weighbridge shed of timber with asbestos roof tiles.
BOUNDARY WALLS to S of tooled ashlar with decorative
pebble-coping and inset panels of applied shell and pebble decoration. Intermediate ramped piers. Approach walls to gateway swept dramatically inwards to tall square gatepiers.
To SW of main gates, a walled triangular area, former
kitchen garden, with an eccentric keyhole shaped gateway with
cross-slit and ball finial. To the SW corner of this garden
set in wall, a small castellated drum turret containing gardener's toolshed.
TOOL SHED / WEIGHBRIDGE: set to NE of main gates, rectangular plan single storey tool shed and former weighbridge. Single storey. Deep rendered base course and rendered panel-facing between timbers above. Some red terracotta draper-pattern tiling. Pitched fish-scale tiled roof with deep dentilled eaves.
Statement of Special Interest
Corseyard farm model dairy is an outstanding example of a model dairy, built under the imaginative patronage of James Brown who also owned the nearby Knockbrex estate (see separate listing). The dairy exhibits fine architectural detailing, which is unusual for a predominantly functional building type. The style is predominantly Gothic revival, with prominent buttresses and deep hoodmouldings to the main, milking parlour, block. The complex also exhibits nave and aisle plan sections and use of architectural detailing such as arrowslits and battlemented turrets.
The use of highly decorative architectural detailing is characteristic of Brown's patronage, and can also be seen at the nearby wash house at Ingleston and at Knockbrex itself (see separate listings). Both these buildings and the dairy illustrate a careful blend between ornamental design and practical function. In the case of the dairy the use of high quality glazed tiles to the interiors of the milking parlour both enhance the richness of the architecture and also provide a practical interior for the building.
James Brown was a wealthy Manchester merchant, chairman of the retail and wholesale drapery firm of Affleck and Brown. He retired to Knockbrex and began an extensive building programme on the house and estate from 1895 until his death in 1920. Apart from Knockbrex House itself which is comparatively sober in design, the other estate buildings are characterised by a stylistic individuality bordering on the idiosyncratic, and always a careful attention to detail using the highest quality materials. For other estate buildings see separate listings for, Kirkandrews Chapel, Kirkandrews Cottages, Chapelton Row, Knockbrex.
The architect for Brown's work at Knockbrex may have been G H Higginbottom who was based in Manchester. Higginbottom worked in the Arts and Crafts style and was associated with the craftsmen, cabinet maker Frank Hallows and coppersmith James Smithies who Brown used in other commissions.
(List description and statutory address updated 2011).