Farmstead record MKE 033 - Farmstead: Slough Farmhouse

Slough Farmstead is a farmstead visible on the 1st Ed Os map. The farmstead is laid out in a regular courtyard Z-plan with additional detached elements. The farmhouse is detached and set away from the yard. The farmstead sits alongside a public road in a hamlet location. There has been a partial loss of working buildings with modern sheds on site. (S3-6)

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.

Slough Farmhouse is a timber-framed and rendered building of complex evolution and exceptional historic interest. It reflects the standard domestic pattern of the late Middle Ages, with a central hall flanked by a service cross-wing to the east and a parlour wing on the west, but both cross-wings preserve subtle evidence of unusual features that shed light on the sophisticated nature of larger farmhouses in the 15th century. The service wing dates from the late 14th or early 15th century and was initially a jettied structure of two storeys that mirrored the parlour wing, but its entire upper storey was removed in the 19th C when it was converted into a bake-house. Its front wall contains evidence for three diamond-mullion windows. Extensive fenestration os the type in a medieval rural context is highly unique and suggests the wing was designed as a dairy or possibly a workshop. It may have been free-standing but probably adjoined an earlier hall set further to the rear. The parlour cross-wong appears to be only slightly later in origin, but abutted a hall in its present position and is unusual in having possessed a small rear parlour with its own pair of service rooms and may have been designed for a semi-independent family member. The central hall is a reconstruction of the 16th C and re-uses a number of timbers. Both the interior and exterior of the house have been altered and partly rebuilt in various phases and it is now of historic interest as much for the extent to which it illustrates the domestic change of six centuries as for its original fabric. A number of plastered 19th C ceilings are also of interest and may conceal earlier decoration.

A 15th C timber-framed aised barn which re-uses a number of 13th C timbers is also present at the site (S1).

2013-2014: Archaeological monitoring on the reduction of floor levels identified a substantial area of brick paviour floor that survived in the eastern part of the property below later floor surfaces. The floor appears to have been inserted during the conversion of this area of a bakehouse in the 19th century when the formerly jettied range was reduced in height (S2).

Included in the Proceedings of the Suffolk Institute of Archaeology and History annual round up of individual finds and discoveries for 2016 (S7)