Building record WTN 039 - Barns at Red House Farm

Red House Farm adjoins open countryside at the eastern edge of Witnesham village, approximately 4 km north of the modern conurbation of Ipswich. The farmhouse is a high-status Tudor brick and timber building with a fine crow-stepped gable which is listed at grade II* and features in Eric Sandon’s ‘Suffolk Houses’. At the time of the parish tithe survey in 1843 it formed a substantial tenanted holding of 208 acres.
The complex of farm buildings adjacent to the farmhouse includes two timber-framed barns that are individually listed at grade II. The earlier of the two is broadly contemporary with the house and forms part of an historically important 16th century ‘base court’ through which the property would have been approached. It consists of a five-bay threshing barn with a slightly later stable bay to the west, and preserves an impressive interior with an almost full complement of arch-braced tie-beams and wind-braced clasped-purlins in its roof structure. The original western end of the building was of brick and probably mirrored the crow-stepped gable of the house but was rebuilt in circa 1800. The second barn also contains five bays and is listed as 17th century but consists almost entirely of re-used timber and in its present form probably dates only from the late-18th or early-19th centuries. Both barns were formerly thatched but are now uniformly pantiled. The remaining farm buildings are 19th century additions and have altered little since they were depicted on the tithe map of 1843 and the Ordnance Survey of 1880. A brick and timber workshop in the south-western corner of the site was probably designed as a stable with a granary above, while a similar building to the north-east was most recently used as a cow-shed. Both have been extensively altered and lack their original lofts, while the latter has also lost its roof and was derelict at the time of inspection. The yard is unusually well paved with stone that resembles the 19th century pavements of nearby Ipswich.