Former Joinery Workshop, Ford Green Farm, Stoke-on-Trent: Historic Building Record

A Level 2 (HE 2016) historic building record was undertaken of the former Joinery Workshop at Ford Green Farm, Stoke-on-Trent, in response to a condition of planning consent for the site's redevelopment. It comprised a photographic record and measured floor plans. The programme of historic building recording created a permanent record of the site and buildings prior to their conversion and has further enhanced the understanding of their original form and function. Documentary records suggest an early-19th century (pre-1843) date for the laying out of a large courtyard farmstead, with newspaper articles indicating a focus on cattle farming by the late-19th century, with the buildings including pigsties, stables, and cartsheds. Large scale alteration in the mid-20th century saw the site used as a builders' yard, then as a joiners workshop, forming large open industrial spaces. The historic layout of the farm buildings has been interpreted from the preserved arrangement of blocked doors and windows, and informed by documentary records. This indicates the remaining buildings served as livestock housing, with central feeding passage arrangements and haylofts above. A single-storey part of the buildings may have served as a cartshed with an adjacent stable, and the scars of the removed pigsty housing.