Listed Building: THE WOODLANDS (281793)

TM 07 SW WALSHAM LE WILLOWS FINNINGHAM R0AD 3/48 The Woodlands II Farmhouse, C16, early and mid C17. Timber-framed; painted roughcast render; plaintiles. 2 storeys and attics; L-shaped form. North-south range with internal stack and lobby-entrance: chimnmey with 4 short attached hexagonal shafts on a moulded base. 2 old 3-light casement windows to each floor, all with transome, pintle hinges and square leaded panes. The jettied south gable end has a similar window to the upper floor below a boxed-in projecting tie- beam, and an Edwardian canted bay to the ground floor with marginal glazing to French doors. A 2-storey porch with lead-covered flat roof has a 2-light square-leaded-paned window to the upper floor and an added open gabled porch extension. 4-panelled door with sunk panels, the top 2 glazed. On the rear wall one early C17 ground floor window: mullion-and-transome, the mullions chamfered externally but ovolo-moulded inside; diamond leading, also to one small single-light upper window. The east-west range has 2 4-light, one 3- light and 2 cross windows, all similar to those in the other range, with square leaded panes. A red brick gable end with chimney-stack on the east, corbels at eaves, plain coping and shaft. Doorway with moulded jambs, bolection mould to architrave and triangular pediment; half-glazed door. On the rear wall a large red-brick stepped stack, set externally, and a c19 brick and flint single storey lean-to. Interior in 4 phases, the earliest a 2-bay' section in the north-west corner, originally an unheated parlour wing, now divided up: good close-studding, cambered tie-beam with long arched braces, roof with clasped purlins and no principals, an original window in the apex of the gable altered to a doorway. Added to this section, and possibly replacing an older part of the complex, is a 2-cell lobby-entrance range in 5 bays aligned north-south. Interior with good studding exposed on upper floor; chamfer and curved stops to ground-floor ceiling-beams; blocked windows on the upper floor, and a C18 fireplace surround with eared architrave. Roof with clasped purlins, fitted into cut-away sections of the full principal rafters, and very small windbraces. The east-west range is in 2 phases, all with plain timbering and some main ceiling-beams exposed: the earlier part, on right, in 3 bays, contains a large kitchen and 2 adjoining service rooms; the gable end wall to this part, with Jacobean carving to the overhanging tie-beam, now forms an inner wall to the left end of this range, originally not accessible from inside the house. The roof over the whole east-west range has 2 rows of butt purlins and very large principal rafters. This building is very well documented, and had reached its present form by 1662 or earlier. A probate inventory for John Salkeld (d.1699), who lived there for many years, details the rooms recognisably as they are today. See D.P Dymond 'Archaeology & History' p.151, and S. Colman'Post Medieval Houses in Suffolk' Procs. Suff. Inst. Arch & Hist., Vol XXXIV Pt.3 p.188. Listing NGR: TM0094271271