19509

 

II*  

Designated  

20/03/1998  

20/03/1998  

Mill and Tank House, Leighton Farm  

 

Powys  

Forden with Leighton and Trelystan  

Forden  

Leighton Farm  

324258  

305322  

 

Towards N end of Leighton Farm with Piggery and Sheep Shed to N, farm road and Stockyards I and II to S, and with Granary attached to S side above the road.  

Agriculture and Subsistence  

 

Early 1850s and probably designed by the Liverpool architect W.H. Gee for John Naylor's Leighton Farm, the model farm on the Leighton Estate. The Mill may have had a short life since Naylor had a new mill built at nearby Cilcewydd in 1862. The grain was originally hoisted into the mill from the farm road on the S side, but later a direct link was made from the Granary to the S. Power for the Mill was derived from a turbine situated in the Tank House, in which there was a large cast iron tank and a pipe for feeding the turbine with water at high pressure. Portable engines were also used to transmit power into the building through a bearing box in the Tank House wall. In the later C20 the mill and E wing have been used for light industrial purposes. John Naylor had acquired the Leighton Estate in 1846-47 and embarked on an ambitious programme of building, principally Leighton Hall, church and Farm, which was largely completed by the mid 1850s. Naylor continued to extend and improve the Estate until his death in 1889. His grandson, Captain J.M. Naylor, sold the Estate in 1931, when Leighton Farm was bought by Montgomeryshire County Council. Leighton Farm was a model farm where rational farming methods were employed using techniques derived from science and industry. It was characteristic of its period but especially notable for its scale. Apart from the rationalisation of farm design, its principal aims were to provide better shelter for livestock and fodder, the recycling of manure as fertiliser, and mechanisation, principally in the form of turbines and hydraulic rams. The main farm complex is roughly square in plan and enclosed by perimeter roads (although important buildings were added beyond it). The farm was a piecemeal development but it is structured either side of a central E-W axis in which a threshing barn was built with hay and fodder storage buildings either side of it, all of which were linked by a broad gauge railway. On the N and S sides of this axis stockyards were built, served by 2 N-S service roads in addition to the perimeter roads. By 1849 4 small yards (Stockyard IV) had been built S of the Threshing Barn with a Stable fronting the road, these 3 elements forming the central block of buildings. On the E and W sides, fronting the road to the S, houses were built (on the W side with an office and further livestock sheds behind). After 1849 3 stockyards (Stockyards I, II, III) were built on the N side of the main axis. By 1855 there had been additions beyond the perimeter road, with the building of a Mill and Pig and Sheep houses (which enclose 2 further stockyards) on the N side and a further stock shed with yard on the W side. In the late 1850s a Sheep-Drying Shed and a further Fodder Storage Building in line with the main E-W axis had been added, followed by a Root Shed at the south-east corner of the complex in the 1860s. The buildings were carefully designed to achieve a strong visual impact when approached from the roads to the N or W. The landscape was carefully controlled so that Leighton Farm could not be seen from the main Buttington to Forden road to W, alongside which was a mixed woodland plantation. The main entrance to the farm was intended to be from the N side where there is an imposing gateway and lodge beside the church. The pig and sheep houses in particular create a grand facade when approached from the N, but Stockyards I and II, the Fodder Storage Buildings, Stable and Poolton at the south-west corner, are all designed to impress when viewed from the outside.  

Mill with Tank House to E, of brick with slate roofs and with coped gables on moulded kneelers. The Mill is three-and-a-half storeys and has a 3-window W front, with round-headed attic windows (blind to L and R) segmental headed windows in the middle and upper storeys. In the lower storey it has openings under segmental heads to L and R and a doorway in the centre under a steel lintel. The E gable has similar windows to attic and to R but has a 2-storey Tank House attached which has, in the N side wall, a round-headed doorway to R and 3 round-headed windows (2 of which are infilled) in the upper storey and an infilled bearing box below the eaves. Its E gable has one infilled round-headed window. Above the Granary, in S wall of the Mill, is a former gabled doorway rising above the eaves, with slate-hung blocking.  

The Mill was not accessible at the time of inspection. The Tank House is said to have a roof of king posts, and to contain supports for a cast iron tank, a cast iron pipe and a drive shaft support beam, from where power was transmitted from the turbine to the Mill.  

The Leighton Estate is an exceptional example of high-Victorian estate development. It is remarkable for the scale and ambition of its conception and planning, the consistency of its design, the extent of its survival, and is the most complete example of its type in Wales. Leighton Farm is one of the principal foci of this development and is a Victorian model farm of national importance, representing the pioneering use of new technology, displaying a highly-structured layout and achieving an impressive architectural unity. Listed Grade II*, the Mill and Tank House is an integral part of the complex and especially associated with the introduction of new technology at Leighton.