Building record ISM 034 - Rookery Farm, Grub Lane

The former farmhouse at Rookery Farm lies within a medieval moated enclosure in open countryside and is reached by a dedicated track from Grub Lane some 500 m to the south. The property has been assigned to Spexhall for postal purposes but in fact lies in the historic parish of Ilketshall St Margaret. It formed a medium-sized tenanted arable farm of just over 70 acres in 1963 with land extending into Spexhall and Ilketshall St Lawrence, and the site includes a mid-19th century threshing barn to the east of the moat. The two-storied timber-framed and rendered house is listed at grade II as an early-17th century structure with a ‘basic 2-cell lobby-entrance plan’ and a 19th century single storied brick extension which contains the modern kitchen projecting from its front wall. The building is in fact of much greater historic interest that this suggests, and was almost certainly built in circa 1600 as an extension to the moat’s medieval hall to form a ‘unit house’ for a semi-independent unit of the family.

The timber frame is a high quality structure of unusual width (5.8 m or 19 ft), and preserves an exceptional number of original windows with hollow-moulded mullions. It contains a central chimney dividing a hall to the south from a parlour on the north in the standard layout of its period, but the original external doorway in the chimney bay cannot represent a lobby entrance as the hall also contains evidence of an original cross-passage against its southern gable. An uninterrupted series of stud mortises in the mid rail of this gable, coupled with an original first-floor window, proves the building lacked service rooms in the normal position. The front wall of the parlour was clearly built against another structure as it lacked windows on both storeys and a first-floor connecting door was inserted at a relatively early date. This door is now blocked by the roof of the brick kitchen wing, which was not built until circa 1910 as indicated by historic maps. The ‘lobby entrance’ connected the new suite of rooms to a much larger range shown on these maps that was of approximately the same size as the present house. There is evidence of a severe fire near the junction that may have destroyed this range, or damaged it beyond repair, and occasioned a major refurbishment of the remaining wing that included the replacement of its windows and the complete reconstruction of its roof using what appear to be the original timbers but with a lower pitch.

Unit houses of this kind were once thought to be rare, but are now being identified in increasing numbers throughout rural East Anglia. They typically date from the late-16th and 17th centuries and were intended to accommodate the younger or older generations of farming families. The new structures often lack service rooms of their own as they shared those of the old house against which they were built. Despite the loss of the latter in this instance Rookery Farm is a well framed and generally well preserved example and is accordingly of considerable historic interest. The early-20th century kitchen wing reflects the profile of the missing larger range but has been much altered in its relatively short life and is not of special significance in itself (S1).