Farmstead record BTY 060 - Farmstead: Malting Farm

Malting Farm is a farmstead visible on the 1st Ed Os map. The farmstead is laid out in a linear plan with the farmhouse detached and set away from the yard. The farmstead sits alongside a public road in a hamlet location. There has been a significant loss of working buildings with the remaining converted for residential use. (S2-5)

Malting Farm is a grade II-listed timber-framed house of considerable historic interest. Dating from the beginning of the 16th century the surviving structure represents two-thirds of a typical mid-status farmhouse of that period, containing a hall and parlour but lacking the usual buttery and pantry. These missing service rooms probably lay in a separate cross-wing retained from the medieval house on the site but subsequently demolished. The ‘new’ hall illustrates the revolution in domestic housing which swept England in the early Tudor period and saw the replacement of smoky, draughty medieval halls (open to their roofs and heated only by bonfire-like open hearths) with fireplaces and ceilings. The hall at Malting Farm originally extended to 19 feet in length and possessed a chimney against its back wall, but as expectations of domestic comfort increased still further during the 17th century this was in turn replaced by the present chimney with back-to-back fireplaces. The Tudor parlour at the warmer western end of the house operated as a bedroom but was not heated initially. The upper storey formed a storage area which was open to its plain crown-post roof in the manner of a barn, and completely undivided before the insertion of the present chimney. The associated farmland extended to a modest 28.5 acres in 1841, and the large scale of its outbuildings, as shown on 19th century maps, suggests, like its name, that Malting Farm was one of many in the region engaged in the commercial production of malt (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.

2024:The former farmhouse at Malting Farm is a late-15th or early-16th century timber-framed structure of special historic interest. It forms a rare two-cell rural house with a hall and parlour but lacking the usual service rooms beyond its cross-passage. It illustrates an important transitional stage in the development of English housing from the open halls of the Middle Ages to the multiple fireplaces of the 17th century, and was originally heated by a chimney against the rear wall of its floored hall. The single three-bay chamber on the first floor was unheated and spanned by a pair of arch-braced tie-beams carrying plain crown-posts that still survive in the present loft. The hipped gables at both ends of this chamber create a distinctive external appearance that in conjunction with a long ‘catslide’ extension represents one of the building’s key historic features. The original eastern gable formed the low-end of the hall but lacked service doors and probably lay in close proximity to a detached kitchen or bake-house. The catslide extension was intended either to normalise the layout or to compensate for the loss of space in the hall when a large chimney containing three fireplaces was inserted into its high-end bay, replacing the former external chimney. The arched head of the rear door remains intact and the frame consists of unusually large 7 or 8-inch wide timbers with a high proportion of waney elm. The site lies in open countryside approximately 1 km east of St Mary’s Church in Bentley, and at the time of the 1841 tithe survey the farm contained just over 60 acres extending over the nearby boundary with Tattingstone. Its name suggests it was involved in the extensive local malting industry, although there is no physical evidence of this. The outbuildings depicted in 1841 were rebuilt soon afterwards but of their Victorian replacements only a much altered probable coach house with a first-floor granary now survives along with a small adjoining stable. (S6).