Listed Building record MDR14219 - The Cart Shed and Joiner's Shop, Calke Abbey

A grade II listed joiners shop and cart hovel dating to the mid 19th century. The building is built of red brick and timber, with a plain tile roof. The cart hovel to the north is open on the west side with ten bays divided by stop chamfered timber columns. The joiners shop to the south is single-storeyed over a basement. The west elevation has four segment-headed glazing bar sashes. It also has a dentil eaves cornice. The east side has a lateral brick stack and two similar sashes. The south gable end has a flight of eight steps with stone treads laid on brick, leading up to a large segment-headed doorway with plank double doors. Listed for group value only. (1) The National Trust offices at Calke are now [2013] set within a former cart and implements shed on the east edge of the former farmyard. The building has ten bays. The formerly open west elevation has a series of octagonal timber posts, chamfered at the top and set on stone bases. Inside there are softwood king post trusses supporting a tiled roof, now with some added skylights. The latter are largely composed of lightweight timber partitioning behind a natural looking frontage discretely set back from the line of support posts. At the south end of the former shed there is a shorter, narrower an taller building with a sunken basement and a raised upper floor. With steps leading up to the raised level the juxtaposition with a cart shed would normally mark the building out as a likely granary, a building that is otherwise difficult to distinguish elsewhere within this Calke farmstead. However, this building was until recently used as a joiner's shop, with timber stored in the basement and worked on the upper floor. The building still retains work benches, tools and a quantity of timber. It is close to the mason's yard to the south and is clearly more a general estate building than one directly associated with farming. The farm buildings at Calke may have been built in the 1830s and 1840s, in a period when there was a lull in the building of planned model farms. The brickwork certainly dates them to before 1850. Their positioning, and the lack of a farmhouse, usually a key component of a model farm, suggests a more organic growth of the farmstead, probably starting at the pre-existing horse enclosure with a barn and animal sheds. The joiner's shop probably predates 1835, and the cart shed is pre-1850. (2)