Farmstead record RMA 031 - Farmstead: Villa Farm (Rushmere Villa)

Rushmere Villa is a farmstead visible on the 1st Ed Os map. The farmstead is laid out in a regular courtyard E-plan with a full courtyard elements attached. The farmhouse is detached and set away from the yards. The farmstead sits alongside a public road in an isolated location. This farmstead survives intact (S2-5).

16th C timber-framed and weatherboarded open-hall house and kitchen with a smoke-blackened crownpost roof and diamond mullioned windows. A new farmhouse was built in the 19th C and this structure was subsequently used as a garage and store (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.

Villa Farm lies in open countryside on the north-eastern edge of the Ipswich conurbation. At the time of the Rushmere tithe survey in the 1840s it was a substantial arable holding of 117 acres belonging to Joseph Everett, and by 1861 had passed to his son Robert Lacey Everett who went on to farm 375 acres and serve three terms in parliament as the Liberal MP for Woodbridge. Robert is likely to have been responsible for building the present gault-brick farmhouse known by 1874 as 'The Villa' and rhe large threshing barn in the complex of farm buildings to the east. This barn bears the incised date 1856 and is unusual in combining weatherboarded side walls with brick gables. It survives largely intact and is of historic interest as a late example of the traditional form with connections to an MP who sought to represent the local farming community. The rest of the farm complex consists of matching single-storied red-brick and pantiled sheds grouped around a horse yard and two cattle yards. These structures complement the barn and form a visually attractive group, but have been extensively altered and were built in a piecemeal fashion rather than as a single-phase model farm. Their historic significant is accordingly limited. The site includes an early-16th century grade II-listed timber-framed 'garden store' behind the house which was almost certainly designed as a rare detached bakehouse rather than a domestic dwelling as suggested hitherto (S6).