MSO11280 - New Barn, Ashcott Barton (Building)

Leat from Pennycombe Brook at SS 8100 3897 fed a small pond (both traceable) to an overshot wheel. Pit partly infilled, approx 16 feet by 4 feet. Wheel was rim geared. Culverted tailrace. [1] Wheel pit as above, but with cog and shaft still in situ. Side of the building, now a bank, has been rendered and so no sign of shaft holes etc. Tail race follows field boundary south to stream. Leat well preserved except in rough area in northwestern corner of the central field. This is the field subject to the planning application. [2] This record was enhanced as part of the National Record of the Historic Environment to Exmoor National Park Historic Environment Record data transfer project. [3,8] The barn was subject to a Level 3 building survey in 2000. The site was noted to be a good example of an Exmoor field outfarm, comprising a bank barn, enclosure walls and hedges, water wheel pit, and dam wall and leat. The barn dates to the 19th Century and was probably built for hand processing and storing cereal and root crops, later adapted for water powered mechanised processing. It is built of rubble and has a large single room rectangular plan, with a ground floor shippon that may or may not have been subdivided. The upper floor stored fodder and had a wide double width cart entrance, which may have also allowed threshing and winnowing in this space. A collapsed building abutted the eastern end of the barn at the time of survey, and was thought to be a later addition, apparently housing the water wheel's power transmission system, with the end wall rising directly out of the water wheel pit. The pit was served by a header pond to the northeast, fed by a leat approaching from Pennycombe Water to the north. [4] New Barn is depicted and labelled on the 25 inch 1st Edition map, together with the pond to the northeast and the barn's enclosure. A further small outbuilding is shown at SS 8135 3882. The leat is not apparent. [5] It is likely that part of the earthworks transcribed by the National Mapping Project in Monument record MMO380 includes part of the course of the leat. [6,7]