Home Barn, with attached former laundry and walls

Summary

This small collection of buildings, built in 1930 on the site of former farm structures near Gullet Farmhouse, includes a lavish dining hall with attached kitchens and apartments, as well as a laundry. Designed by noted architect Herbert Read, who was responsible for the near-complete rebuilding of the estate buildings for Ian and Helen MacDonald, the complex showcases some of his finest work, from the playful curves of the roofs to the impressive oak roof trusses and gallery to the banqueting hall.

Reasons for Designation

Home Barn with attached former laundry and walling, Gullet Farm, South Pool, Devon, is listed at Grade II for the following principal reasons:

Architectural interest:

* as a successful reinvention of former home farm buildings into a space for celebration, accommodation and service uses close to the country house, with a banqueting hall as the centrepiece;
* as a well-executed design by noted architect Herbert Read of Read and MacDonald in the Arts and Crafts style, with distinctive features such as undulating cedar shingle roofs;
* it is constructed of good quality materials with good detailing, particularly evident in the galleried banquetting hall, which is open to its impressive oak-trussed roof.

Historic interest:

* as a significant addition to this revitalised 1920s country estate. The rebuilt farm buildings are presented in the traditional form of a stable block in an open courtyard arrangement but instead serving the dining and service needs of the main house and its guests, reflecting the broader societal shift away from having farm buildings close to the homestead in favour of spaces dedicated to leisure and entertainment;
* as the country seat of Ian MacDonald, son of the architect Robert Falconer MacDonald, and grandson George MacDonald, the notable C19 poet and author.

Group value:

* the building has a strong functional and historic relationship with the main house and the estate’s other Grade II listed buildings: the Boathouse, Drive Cottage and The Dairy.

History

The site of Gullet Farmhouse is shown on the 1840 tithe map for South Pool Parish as a small cluster of buildings by the foreshore of Southpool Creek with other farm buildings scattered across the surrounding landscape. The farm may have developed from a fishing settlement, and the dates ‘1632 - 1927’ inscribed on a rainwater hopper to the house suggest that the farmhouse was of early C17 date. The tithe apportionment records the house as a Homestead for Gullet Farm, occupied by Richard and John Garland and owned by William Mackworth Praed. The Garlands also farmed the adjacent Pool Park Farm at this time. A detached L-plan building is shown to the southeast on the tithe map, on the site of what is now the Home Barn, and outlying barns are shown in the surrounding farmland. These are marked as Higher Barn (to the southeast) and Poolpark Barn (east) on the First Edition Ordnance Survey Map of 1888. Gullet and Pool Park, “known as Gullet Farm”, was offered for auction in June 1911. At that time, the holding included around 142 acres of land, the farmhouse with four bedrooms and a dairy, and a range of “Home Buildings” included a linhay, a barn, stables, piggeries and a poultry house (ref sales particulars).

In 1925, Ian and Helen MacDonald bought the 155-acre peninsula including the farmhouse and farm buildings. MacDonald commissioned his late father’s practice, Read and MacDonald of London, to renovate the farmhouse. However, after a fire in 1928 the house was rebuilt to plans by the firm. New buildings were added to the homestead and across the farm as part of the creation of a modern interwar dairy estate, which was fully operational by the outbreak of the Second World War, in which both Ian and Helen MacDonald served.

In 1930, the Home Barn was rebuilt on the higher ground to the east of the house as a place for hosting guests, with a service wing and a laundry building attached by a rendered brick arch, and with staff accommodation to the first floor. An archway with a clock and bellcote, together with tile-topped garden walling formed the entrance to newly laid formal gardens, which adjoined a walled kitchen garden with glasshouses. These features were commissioned from well-regarded specialist designers, with Herbert Read responsible for the design of the archway, garden walls and parts of the formal garden layout. A home dairy farm was built to the east of the gardens, with further farm buildings and a stable block on the site of Higher Barn. The overall intention appears to have been to separate the farm’s working functions from the domestic setting of the farmhouse.

Further estate buildings were introduced and updated from the mid-late-C20 under the ownership of their son Robert Ian MacDonald, a businessman who ran a successful dairy herd on the farm and acquired further land on the north shore of South Pool Creek. In the early C21, the estate was sold, and improvements made to the land drainage and renovations of the house, Home Barn and laundry. There were also alterations to the formal gardens and repairs and some alterations to farm buildings and estate cottages. In the C21, the former laundry is arranged as guest accommodation.

Details

An ensemble of domestic and service buildings arranged around an open courtyard comprising a dining hall with attached accommodation wing, a former laundry building, and associated walling with an archway, designed by Read and MacDonald in 1929 for Ian and Helen MacDonald and built in 1930. Refurbished in the C21.

MATERIALS: constructed of brick and rendered with roofs covered in cedar shingles and with stone stacks. The interior of the Home Barn dining hall features an oak gallery with balustrade and stairs, oak roof trusses and pine floorboards. The courtyard is paved with stone setts with granite kerbing. The walling is rendered with tile detailing.

PLAN: Home Barn is on an L-plan and of single storey plus attic. It forms an open courtyard with the former laundry to the west.

EXTERIOR: in the Arts and Crafts style with gently undulating eyebrow eaves above principal openings, most notably to the east garden front, and crisp leaded casements in roughcast rendered elevations. The open courtyard, with regularly spaced stable doors to one side and the nearby archway with clock and bellcote, evokes a country estate stable block and carriage house. The neat arrangement of openings and undulating eaves is carried through to the former laundry, which has a central stone ridge stack, rendered to the lower portion. To the south, a slender arch connects to the east/west wing of Home Barn, which on its east elevation breaks forward and is set within a rising grass bank.

INTERIOR: the principal north/south wing of Home Barn is a single, galleried dining hall under an open five-truss roof. At the south end is a stone fireplace with clay tile hearth. At the north end, a staircase provides access to the gallery. The gallery and staircase have turned oak balustrades. The east/west wing of the Home Barn has no historic fittings.

SUBSIDIARY FEATURES: a rendered wall with tiles coping and an archway, topped by a bellcote and clock, separates the yard from the formal gardens. The wall is attached to the northeast corner of Home Barn and adjoins further walling with tiled coping alongside the adjacent walled garden. On the north side of the former laundry, the path to the house is delineated by two conical piers.

Sources

Websites
New York Times Death Notice, Macdonald, Robert Ian, 2014, accessed 28.05.25 from https://archive.nytimes.com/query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage-9A0DE7D8113AF93BA25756C0A9629D8B63.html

Other
Gullet Farm Estate Papers of Ian MacDonald Esquire: Architect plans and sketches of 1927-35 by Read and MacDonald (Herbert Read).
Plan of the South Pool Estate, For Sale by Auction by Messrs. Rendell and Sawdye on Monday June12th 1911.

End of official list entry