Farmstead record BEY 016 - Farmstead: Beyton House/Lodge

Beyton House is a substantial red-brick country house built in 1936 at the southern edge of Beyton parish on the foundations of an earlier house destroyed by fire. The 1729 map shows an outbuilding on or close to the coach house and stables which now abuts the eastern end of the walled garden, but the present building does not appear on the tithe map of 1838 and is likely to date from the 1850s. It either adjoins or overlies the in-filled eastern arm of the moat, and its flint-rubble walls incorporate numerous blocks of medieval dressed stone. These stones may have been found on the site when its foundations were dug, but are more likely to have been salvaged from the nave of Beyton church when it was rebuilt in 1854. The original building consisted of a central coach house flanked on the east and west by symmetrical stables with hay lofts above. Each stable contained three stalls but these were replaced by loose boxes later in the 19th century and the attic room above the coach house was partly removed to increase headroom, leaving only sufficient to reach a pair of new internal doors serving the hay lofts. Two well made loose boxes still survive in the western stable, along with an external mounting block with steps of moulded stone and numerous wooden harness hooks. The eastern stable was damaged by its conversion into a garage during the 20th century, although part of its original brick floor survives, and the building was extended westwards to create a new tack room before 1884 and eastwards to form lean-to log store between 1884 and 1904. The roof was also reinforced with a secondary tier of collars and purlins which restricts headroom in the hay lofts. Despite these alterations, and the loss of the house for which it was erected, the building is a relatively well-preserved example of an increasingly rare ‘gentry’ stable block on a relatively modest scale, and is accordingly of considerable historic value (S1).
October 2014: Archaeological monitoring of ground level reduction was undertaken at Beyton House, Beyton, as a condition of a planning consent to develop the former coach house. A short drain run revealed clean natural subsoil but elsewhere, the stripped surface comprised only a loose imported sub-base. (S2)

Beyton House/Lodge, Beyton. 19th century farmstead and farmhouse. Regular courtyard multi-yard plan formed by working agricultural buildings. The farmhouse is set away from the yard. Significant loss (over 50%) of the traditional farm buildings have been lost. Located within a hamlet. The plan layout of the farm buildings is completely different to the 1838 tithe map (S3-8).

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.