Survey Data
Reg No
31303014
Rating
Regional
Categories of Special Interest
Architectural, Historical, Social
Original Use
Farm house
Date
1780 - 1785
Coordinates
122298, 320767
Date Recorded
25/02/2011
Date Updated
--/--/--
Description
Detached eight-bay two-storey farmhouse, built 1784; extant 1838, originally seven-bay two-storey on a symmetrical plan[?]. Occupied, 1911. Vacated, 1993. Now disused. Pitched slate roof on timber construction with clay ridge tiles, rendered coping to gables with roughcast red brick Running bond chimney stacks to apexes centred on red brick Running bond chimney stacks having stepped capping, and no rainwater goods surviving on roughcast red brick dentilated cornice. Roughcast battered walls. Round-headed central door opening with threshold, and rendered surround supporting dragged cut-limestone monolithic cornice. Square-headed window openings with concrete sills[?], and concealed red brick block-and-start surrounds framing two-over-two (ground floor) or six-over-three (first floor) timber sash windows having part exposed sash boxes. Set in unkempt grounds.
Appraisal
A dilapidated farmhouse erected for Henry Crofton (1735-1802) regarded as an important component of the later eighteenth-century domestic built heritage of the rural environs of Ballina with the architectural value of the composition suggested by such attributes as the elongated rectilinear plan form centred on an understated doorcase; the diminishing in scale of the openings on each floor producing a graduated visual impression; and the brick work embellishing a high pitched roofline. A prolonged period of unoccupancy or neglect notwithstanding, the elementary form and massing survive intact together with substantial quantities of the original fabric, thus upholding much of the character or integrity of a farmhouse having historic connections with the Crofton family including Robert Crofton (1783-1815); the Deane family including Hugh Deane (Lewis 1837 I, xxii; Ordnance Survey Letters); the D'Arcy family including John Samuel D'Arcy (Slater 1846, 104); and the Hunter family including Robert Hunter (b. 1838), 'Farmer' (NA 1911).