SDO12444 - Bagber Farm House, Bagber, Sturminster Newton, Dorset. Building Recording and Phasing

Wessex Archaeology were commissioned by Lawray Partnership (Chartered Architects) to carry out a building recording and phasing at Bagber Farm House, Bagber, Sturminster Newton, Dorset. Bagber Farm House is Listed Grade II and incorporates date stones of 1589 and 1863. Renovation works had revealed a number of historic features in the house which were recorded manually and photographically. The purpose of the building recording and phasing was to provide a record of the historic features revealed by the renovation works, to establish the plan form and surviving aspects of the Elizabethan house, and to use the architect's drawings to produce a phased plan of the house. It was concluded that Bagber Farm House was originally L-shaped with a stair tower at the rear. It had a large fireplace with an internal chimney stack in the western gable. Evidence of this stack survives as smoke blackening on the inside face of this gable in the attic. The two other ground floor rooms also had large stone fireplaces, both with moulded surrounds. Stairs rose clockwise in the stair tower up to the first floor, where room divisions were timber-framed. Soon after the original house was built, and probably in the early-mid seventeenth century, an extension was added to the north west corner, creating a U shaped plan. This phasing is indicated by a straight construction joint in the west wall, and also a slight change in the stonework style. At first floor level, the new room had a stone fireplace with a plain chamfered surround. A new timber staircase rising anticlockwise up the stair tower was installed in the eighteenth century, but it appears that the house later fell into disrepair, causing severe damage to the roof timbers, especially in the east side. In 1863 a major rebuilding took place, including the refacing of the south and east elevations in high quality stone, the replacement of nearly all the windows with replica stone mullioned frames, the construction of a two storey porch and the reconstruction of the roof. Sixteenth century fireplaces were covered over and adapted to receive smaller cast iron fire surrounds.