Farmstead record NTT 022 - Farmstead: Watering Farm/Tudor Grange

Group of farm buildings including a 16th C timber-framed and brick farmhouse with mullioned windows. A number of modifications were carried out in the 17th C when part of the house was rebuilt. The 16th C hall was also demolished at this time and many timbers were re-used to construct a barn which stands at this site. This timber-framed and weatherboarded barn has 6 bays as well as 2 bays of stabling at one end with a hayloft. There is also a detached bakehouse and dairy with a granary above. This structure has a timber-frame infilled with bricknogging as well as diamond mullioned windows and a clasped purlin roof (S1).

Watering Farm/Tudor Grange, Nettlestead. 16th century farmstead and farmhouse with converted buildings. Dispersed cluster plan formed by working agricultural buildings. The farmhouse is set away from the yard. The farmstead is extant. Located within a village (S2-7).

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.

Tudor Grange is among the most unusual and historically interesting houses in Suffolk, and more than justifies its listing at grade II*. It was built on an unusually sophisticated plan at the beginning of the 17th century, and largely rebuilt soon afterwards to provide a new hall and parlour of exceptional height and quality. The second phase of construction was probably the work of Thomas Wingfield, a member of the County gentry and a relative of Lord Wentworth of nearby Nettlestead Hall. Wingfield’s remodelling, perhaps inspired by Wentworth’s new three-storied brick hunting lodge a mile to the north, contained a large attic chamber with its own fireplace that extended over both the hall and parlour. It appears to have been directly reached from the high-status chambers beneath by means of a remarkable turret-like orie window (akin to a modern bay window) which projected from the parlour’s front gable and rose the full height of the building. This feature has since been removed, along with an additional dormer window which lay above the hall.

The attic chamber commanded fine views of the valley in front of the house and would have operated as an exercise gallery and viewing platform in the height of fashionable taste. Until the recent staining of the roof timbers this rare and historically important space had remained completely unaltered, despite the loss of its windows, having escaped the usual conversion
into servants’ accommodation and consequent rendering. Comparable attic chambers elsewhere were often rendered from the outset, and decorated with wall paintings (especially hunting scenes), and the lack of evidence for such plaster here is of particular interest (S8).