The reason being we are trying to save a large, brick-built former mechanisedl milking parlour built between 1926 and 1928 from being demolished. It has been used as a general purpose barn for storage for many years and a structural survey confirms it to be in sound structural condition. It is curtilage Listed with the Grade 2 Listed farmhouse and an adjacent smaller nineteenth century former milking parlour and an application for Listed Building Consent has been made to demolish it to make way for development.
I am not seeking legal advice but expert opinion of its relative rarity or otherwise, either locally or nationally, as a surviving example of a specialised agricultural building of its period. It is situated in Braunstone on the edge of Leicester, which was once a small estate village and farming community but now engulfed by suburban residential development.
Failing direct knowledge of such matters, if anyone can direct me as to the best persons or sources of information for same, it would be very much appreciated.
Here is a photo of the building. There are brick arched doorways at either end - the one at the far end has been bricked up but could easily be opened up again. The farm was a moderately large and prosperous dairy farm that kept a bull and had a prize-winning herd, tenanted by one family for some generations; the new milking parlour must have been a considerable investment, built at the same time as mains water first came to the village, but the freehold was bought by a wealthy Leicester textile manufacturer in 1926 who may have had ideas of creating a 'model farm' with his tenant but who died before his project could be completed.
Former mechanised milking parlour built c1926 by Geoff172, on Flickr