Farmstead record SBT 035 - Farmstead: Brick Kiln Farm

Brick Kiln Farm is a farmstead visible on the 1st Ed Os map. The farmstead is laid out in a full regular courtyard with the farmhouse detached and set away from the yard. The farmstead sits alongside a public road in a loose farmstead cluster. This farmstead survives intact with possible conversion for residential use.

Brick Kiln Farm lies in open countryside in the south-western corner of Sibton parish, and formed a modest tenanted holding of 58 acres in 1840. The site contains an early-17th century farmhouse and a contemporary or near-contemporary barn to which a cattle yard and various associated brick sheds were added in the mid-19th century. The house is listed at grade II, but the timber-framed barn is particularly good example of its type and has been omitted in error from the Schedule of Listed Buildings. Its roof structure of clasped-purlins with a lower tier of butt-purlins survives intact, with an impressive array of wind-braces, and its open trusses and wall framing are also largely complete. The building contained a three-bay barn to the east (towards the house) and a floored bay to the west which operated as a stable. The stable ceiling and partition were removed when a brick extension was added in the 19th century, but the entrance passage remains in use and rare evidence of the original doors and windows survives in the walls. The extension incorporates wasters from an eponymous kiln which lay by the pond to the south of the farmhouse in 1840 (S1).

Recorded as part of the Farmsteads in the Suffolk Countryside Project. This is a purely desk-based study and no site visits were undertaken. These records are not intended to be a definitive assessment of these buildings. Dating reflects their presence at a point in time on historic maps and there is potential for earlier origins to buildings and farmsteads. This project highlights a potential need for a more in depth field study of farmstead to gather more specific age data (S2).

An early-17th-century timber-framed barn and stable were recorded prior to conversion, along with the adjoining 19th-century farm complex. The barn is of typical East Anglian type, with a three-bay open barn and an integral floored bay designed as a small stable and hay loft at one end (Fig. 15). The stable was extended in the 19th century, but evidence of its original opposing gable doors and two small windows still survives, as does a fine roof structure of clasped and butt-purlins with wind braces at every truss. The barn was divided from the stable by a missing internal partition but open to the hay loft above, and extended to 9m in length by 5.7m in overall width; the stable was 3.5m long x 5.7 m wide. The barn initially contained only a small rear door opposite its southern entrance, in the usual manner of its period, but this was enlarged in the 19th century. The building is probably contemporary with the adjacent grade II-listed timber-framed farmhouse.Included in the Proceedings of the Suffolk Institute of Archaeology and History annual round up of individual finds and discoveries for 2008 (S6).