Farmstead record SUT 300 - Farmstead: Sutton Hall

Sutton Hall is a late 19th century model farm visible on the 1st Ed Os map. The farmstead is laid out in a full regular courtyard with additional detached elements. The farmhouse is detached and set away from the yard. The farmstead sits alongside a public road in an isolated location. This farmstead survives intact with additional modern sheds on site (S1-4).

This Sutton Hall is not that of the medieval manor of Sutton Hall but a substantial country house of red brick with gault-brick facades that does not appear to be shown on the 1844 tithe map and was probably built in the mid-19th century by Thomas Waller. The building still reflects the standard layout plan of its era, with a central entrance between dining and drawing rooms in the front range to the south and a breakfast room, staircase and kitchen to the rear. It retains a number of good original features including two ‘stick baluster’ staircases and an imposing facade that survives almost entirely unaltered. It preserves evidence of an unusual and early change of orientation whereby the narrow southern entrance passage was replaced by a more spacious Victorian porch and lobby added to the back wall. A detached stable now converted into a garage is probably contemporary with the house but a former single-storied bake-house adjoining its rear corner may have been retained from the previous house on the site. This bake-house was provided with a new upper storey in 1963 and a number of other internal changes have since occurred, including the removal of the original entrance passage and the addition of a large conservatory on the east (S5).

The red-brick and pantiled farm buildings form an imposing, high status model farm that illustrates the sophisticated nature of Victorian High Farming. They may well have been built at the same time as the Hall and are arranged around a spacious courtyard that includes open-sided sheltersheds with iron arcade posts to the east and west and a slate-roofed coach house to the south. This has a gault-brick façade to reflect the Hall, and was described in the 1900 auction catalogue as a ‘carriage house with two loose boxes, two stalls, a harness room and a coach house with a corn, hay and straw loft above’. The three lofts retain their original boarded partitions, and the coach house its imitation ashlar internal plaster, but the rest has been converted into farm offices. A number of other buildings have been altered or rebuilt, particularly in the southern range, but the two identical granaries to the north of the yard are exceptional examples of their kind that represent some of the most impressive Victorian agricultural buildings in Suffolk. Each one extends to over 17.75 m in length by 12 m in width (58 ft by 39.5 ft), and contains a six-bay cart lodge on one side with a stable facing the yard on the other. The upper storeys are divided by spine walls into pairs of corn stores and hay lofts. The stables were said to accommodate 18 cart horses in 1900 and although stripped of their fixtures and fittings the two buildings have survived largely unaltered (S6).

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.