Listed Building: Upper Barn (508189)

UFFORD 1219/0/10014 LOUDHAM LANE 04-MAY-10 Upper Barn II Threshing barn, 1767; built of red brick in Flemish bond; corrugated asbestos roof and corrugated iron east door; concrete floor; C19 pantiled porch roof. The building is of five bays with full height centrally placed opposing entrances; that to the west has a porch with hipped roof. EXTERIOR: The exterior is plain brick. Vertical openings are now visible on the inside only, but bricked up square shaped ventilation openings can be seen beneath the gables to both north and south. To the north of the west porch is a small integral lean-to, accessible from inside the porch. The lean-to on the south side of the porch has been removed, revealing a door set into a bricked up round-headed arch and the ghost of two rooflines in the porch brickwork. The entrance to the porch is enclosed with modern weatherboarding, and contains a door and window. The open sided structure attached to the north gable end is modern. INTERIOR: Tall narrow ventilation slits to either side of the doors and in the gable ends can now only be seen from the inside. These were formed by removing a vertical row of six headers and stretchers, creating a distinctive pattern. Some of these have been filled with bricks only on the outer skin; others have been filled on the inside as well. The roof structure is complete, and has coupled rafters, staggered butt purlins and collars. The wall plate contains face halved and bladed scarf joints, most clearly seen where it straddles the opening to the porch. Inside the porch can be seen the round arches to either side; that to the north remains open to the small lean-to. As well as the inscription BRICK BARN 1767 to the north side of the porch, there are a number of tally marks in the surrounding brickwork consisting of four vertical strokes crossed through by a fifth. HISTORY: Upper Barn is an isolated threshing barn, and is shown as such on the Ufford tithe map of 1845. Its parent farm, Willow Farm, is about 750m to the south. The farm was tenanted, and belonged to the trustees of the Thomas Mills Charity, founded in 1703; the charity was a considerable landowner in the area in the C18 and C19 and responsible for funding the Grade II* listed Almshouses on Station Road, Framlingham, (1703) and the Unitarian Meeting House on Bridge Street, Framlingham, (1717) also listed at Grade II*. A carefully executed inscription on a brick inside the porch apparently names and dates the barn precisely as BRICK BARN 1767. The 1845 tithe map shows the barn with an additional wing to the west, and its plan remains unaltered on the 1882 and 1904 OS maps; the only changes were to the size of the yard shown on the 1882 map, which by 1904 had been enlarged. Changes since include the blocking of openings in all four elevations, and the removal of the probably single storey lean-to the south of the porch; that to the north of the porch remains, but the roof has been rebuilt with a lower pitch. The west wing has been demolished, and the yard has gone. SOURCES: Historic Farmsteads. Preliminary Character Statement: East of England Region. (August 2006) University of Gloucestershire in association with English Heritage and the Countryside Agency. Leigh Alston. Upper Barn, Loudham Lane, Ufford, Suffolk. Historical Assessment. (Oct 2009). REASON FOR DESIGNATION: Upper Barn, a mid C18 field barn, is designated at Grade II for the following principal reasons: * Historical: Its construction and location reflects the expansion of arable cultivation in response to the increase in demand for grain in the mid- late C18. * Construction: Its brick construction is unusual in Suffolk, is of good quality, and is a reflection of the rise in agricultural prosperity in this period. * Intactness: The barn survives substantially intact; in particular its roof structure is complete. * Date: An inscribed date of 1767 offers a rare precision for a building of this type.