Mount Pleasant Farm, Darlington: archaeological building recording (OASIS ID: archaeol3-349643)

Level 2 survey of an 18th-century farmstead. The house contains a few vestiges of an older through-passage building. This archive presents the results of an archaeological recording project conducted in advance of works at Mount Pleasant Farm, Darlington. A photographic and drawn survey of the house and adjoining farm buildings has been carried out. The works were commissioned by Gentoo Homes / Bussey & Armstrong Ltd and conducted by Archaeological Services Durham University. Map evidence shows that that Mount Pleasant has always been an isolated single farmstead. The farm house and eight other buildings have been examined and recorded. All of the other farmstead buildings are modern sheds or shelters of no historical significance. The house at Mount Pleasant Farm was originally a through-passage building of rough stone. It was probably built in the early part of the 18th century, though it could be a little earlier. Such a simple building might have been in a single storey, or it might have had a loft. In the later 18th century it was substantially enlarged by the addition of an upper floor. Another extension in the first half of the 19th century doubled the size of the house. It is very likely that all of the earliest farm buildings were of similar rough stone construction, but it is noticeable that the barn used better stone than the house. This is because of the need to provide a strong structure to house machinery powered from the gin-gang that stood where the stable is today. No features related to the early mechanised working of the barn remain. Traces of the old rough stone survive in the workshop, the stable and the north-west wall of the barn. The latest building covered by this report is the cart shed and granary which was added to the steading in the second half of the 19th century. Through-passage buildings were not uncommon in the region but not many survive today. A notable example in the neighbourhood is a former parsonage at 54 The Green, Hurworth, which is listed at Grade II. This is an older building than the house at Mount Pleasant Farm, but like that building it was extended in the 18th century and altered in the 19th. Its cross-passage runs behind an inglenook with a fire beam, heck screen and salt cupboard. The Mount Pleasant house is smaller, later and simpler than the Hurworth example and it has been very extensively altered. It appears that most of the original stone house has been removed or changed.