Farmstead record UBB 038 - Farmhouse: White House Farm

White House Farm is a farmstead visible on the 1st Ed Os map. The farmstead is laid out in a dispersed plan with the farmhouse set away from the working buildings. The farmstead sits alongside a private track in an isolated location. There has been a significant loss of working buildings with the remaining converted for residential use.

2015 Heritage Asset Assessment: The barn is a 16th/17th century timber-framed building for corn storage and threshing, which lies within the curtilage of White House Farmhouse which is a grade II listed late 16th/early17th century farmhouse. The barn consists of a three-bay timber frame clad in weather board on a brick and partly concrete plinth. The roof is steeply pitched and clad in corrugated iron with three clear Perspex sheets on the west side to light the upper floor. On the east side is a porch with a pitched, gabled corrugated metal roof and timber double doors. There is a lean to chemical store adjoining the north wall of the porch. This has a corrugated metal roof and timber-framed, weather boarded walls set on a concrete block plinth. Adjoining the south side of the porch is an open fronted lean to store with a corrugated metal roof and a timber framed and weather board south wall resting on a concrete block plinth. The south wall of the barn has four tall, narrow, timber-framed windows. There is a pedestrian door in the south wall near the south east corner of the barn. The exterior of the west wall of the barn forms the interir east wall of the large timber framed, corrugated metal grain store. The barn is situated at the south end of a concrete yard with a single corrugated metal sliding door giving access to the grain store. The wooden frame is exposed internally and the walls have been lined with plasterboard between the studs. The frame is pegged and the principal posts are jowelled. Carpenter's marks for assembling the frame are visible on many timbers. The barn has a clasped purlin collar rafter roof and the corrugated metal roof which replaced clay pantiles, is supported by light tmber purlins and two ridge poles outside the original framing. The majority of the timbers are original, dating from 16th/17th century, when the steeply pitched roof would have been thatched (S1).

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.