NHER 60799 (Building record) - Chalk Hill Farm outbuildings

2014. Building Survey.
Survey of agricultural buildings at Chalk Hill Farm.
This large complex of buildings was built to serve a farm of 450 acres (NHER 47267), owned by the Holkham Estate. The audit books list £243 being spent on a new barn in 1813, and the buildings in 1816 were described as 'new and substantial'. A plan of the farm was drawn in 1828 and shows the buildings much as they are today. A plan of the farm buildings from around 1870 shows a farm layout that would be well-suited to the improved farming of the day. To the south is a large threshing barn with two threshing floors, flanked by open yards to the south enclosed by a shelter shed to the west and stables to the east. The barn has a pantiled roof, but was originally reed-thatched. The plan of 1870 shows the barn divided into cake house, chaff barn and dressing barn, indicating that by this date it was no longer used for threshing. To the north is another range of south-facing sheds. The cart-shed is of ten bays with a hipped pantiled roof, and is the only building not shown on the plan of 1828. It is thought to date from the 1870s or 1880s, and is unusual in that it is built from shuttered concrete - a material used experimentally on the Holkham estate for farm buildings and cottages from the early 1870s for about a decade.
See report (S1) for further information.
A. Cattermole (HES), 9 June 2015.