Building record DNT 027 - Elm Farmhouse, Assington Green

Elm Farm lies in open countryside on the western side of the lane between Assington Green and Denston. The site lies in Denston parish but the boundary with Stansfield follows the lane and the property’s current postal address is in the latter. At the time of Thomas Warren’s local map in 1788 the farm was a large tenanted holding of approximately 210 acres on the Denston Hall estate. The house is listed at grade II (under Denston parish) and described in the English Heritage schedule as timber-framed and plastered structure of the ‘17/18th century’. In fact it represents one of the most historically important medieval farmhouses in Suffolk, with a number of exceptional features. Built in the second quarter of the 15th century it reflects the standard domestic layout of its period with a central open hall flanked by a pair of service rooms on the left (east) and a parlour on the right, and remains completely intact with a linear crown-post roof. The two-storied garderobe which still projects from the parlour gable is unique in my experience and may be the only complete timber-framed example of its type in the country. The parlour gable also retains a rare boarded vent by which smoke from the hall was allowed to escape via an open gablet. The octagonal crown-post in the hall is one of the most unusual in the region, combining original down-braces respected by broach stops with an octagonal shaft and capital – all still heavily encrusted with medieval soot but now exposed in a first-floor bedroom. The brick chimney in the hall is an insertion of circa 1500 which pre-dates the mid-16th century ceiling and is finely decorated with a crenellated arcade that is also now exposed in the bedroom but was designed to be visible from beneath. Decorated early Tudor chimneys are notoriously rare, and this hitherto unrecorded example is among the finest and best preserved of its kind. A narrow additional bay was added to the service gable in the 17th century, and a stair turret was built behind the parlour in the 16th century. The turret’s stair is a modern replacement and the structure’s chief interest today is the irregular angle of its southern gable which reflects the alignment of a demolished rear wing shown on 19th century maps that was as large as the main house. The replacement of the lime render which was stripped from the facade as part of an unsympathetic restoration in the late-1970s is one of a number of alterations currently proposed (S1).