Farmstead record KSY 039 - Farmstead: River House, Church Hill (Brickhouse Farm)

Brickhouse Farm is a farmstead visible on the 1st Ed Os map. The farmstead is laid out in a regular courtyard full plan with additional detached elements. The farmhouse is detached and set away from the yard. The farmstead sits alongside a public road in a village loaction. There has been a partial loss of working buildings with the remaining appearing to be in commercial use. (S2-5)

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.

River House is a nationally important grade-II* listed building with an exceptional Tudor brick porch, which has escaped the usual over-restoration, and a rare wall painting depicting life-sized figures in Elizabethan dress that was formerly exposed on its right-hand gable (but has since been hidden by render). The interior preserves many more historic features, including a fine suite of panelling bearing the initials of the wealthy Cooke family of clothiers who owned the property in the late-16th and early-17th centuries. Until the beginning of the 20th century the site was known as the Brick House or Brickhouse Farm, and the survival of an early-16th century timber-framed barn to the rear proves it was both a farmhouse and a merchant’s house from the outset. A survey of Kersey in 1586 notes that Edmund Cooke lived in a house composed of two or more cottages, and this is borne out by the oldest part of the building to the left of the facade which originated as a complete dwelling of just 36 feet in length. This early-16th century structure was jettied along its entire frontage and contained a central hall with a pair of service rooms to the left and a small parlour of only 6 feet in length on the right. The house was doubled in size during the late-16th century when the hall and parlour were combined and the adjoining building to the right was replaced by a chimney stack and a new jettied parlour with a first-floor ‘closet’ or dressing room containing the wall paintings. The original jettied rear service wing, which contained a kitchen and a brew-house or dye-house, was extended at much the same time to create what may have been a rare workshop or showroom with glazed windows and brick nogging. This rear range was converted into a maltings in the 18th century and retains much of its industrial character (S1).