Building record SRL 021 - Venn's Farm

16th C timber-framed farmhouse which originally had a smoke bay and uses a base cruck within its construction. The house was extended during the 17th C and further alterations were made during the 19th and 20th C, including the raising of the roof (S1).

The grade II-listed farmhouse includes a 16th century rear range that appears to have been built as a detached bake-house or kitchen with a small open hall to the east and is of considerable historic interest. At the time of the 1838 tithe survey the farm was a modest but respectable tenanted arable holding of 53 acres owned by the eponymous Edward Beaumont Venn Esquire and occupied by George Mayhew. The farmhouse was described as ‘cottages’ occupied by Mayhew and Lawrance, indicating that it was subdivided.

The barn to the rear of the house is a well preserved late-16th century timber-framed and weatherboarded threshing barn of three bays with a central entrance to the east. The intact clasped-purlin roof preserves five of its original eight wind braces and is steeply pitched for thatch but is now covered with corrugated iron. The framing of the front elevation is intact but both gables were largely rebuilt in the late-18th or 19th century and the rear studs have been removed entirely to accommodate a rear aisle. A gabled porch of unusual length was added at much the same time but consists chiefly of 16th century timber that may have been re-used from an original predecessor. An early-19th century stable adjoining the northern gable has been stripped of its fixtures and fittings but retains a hay drop in its ceiling and a single bentwood harness hook. The barn is shown with its present outline on the 1838 map, excepting only a demolished small shed in the angle of the porch, and is of special historic significance as it illustrates an unusual 16th century farm layout in conjunction with the broadly contemporary bake-house: instead of facing a yard in front of the farmhouse it appears to have flanked a yard to the rear. Despite these points of interest the barn is unlikely to meet the strict English Heritage criteria for listing in its own right due to the extensive loss of original fabric, specifically the absence of the entire rear wall along with its threshing floor, most of the gables and the original thatch and cladding of clay render (S2).