Farmstead record WHA 021 - Farmstead: Hill Farm

Hill Farm, Whatfield. 19th century farmstead and 17th century farmhouse. Regular courtyard L-shaped plan with buildings to the third side, formed by working agricultural buildings. The farmhouse is set away from the yard. Partial loss (less than 50%) of the traditional farm buildings. Located within an isolated position (S1-6).

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.

Hill Farmhouse is a grade II-listed timber-framed building of exceptional historic interest. It contains two distinct phases of construction, of which the earlier, dating from the second quarter of the 16th century, was very unusual by the standards of its day. This Tudor building was highly ostentatious, with a finely carved ceiling, jetty and projecting ‘oriel’ windows, but contained only two ground-floor rooms and completely lacked windows in its rear elevation. Normal houses of the same period contain at least three rooms and possess as many windows in their back walls as in their front. At just 34 feet in length by 15 feet in internal width it was also surprisingly small given its elaborate decoration, and the building may have formed only part of an older, medieval house on the site. Its remarkably conspicuous position in the landscape, commanding fine views over the Brett valley, suggests another possibility, however: it may represent a rare park lodge, designed as temporary accommodation for guests during the hunt rather than a permanent residence. The site lies just 500 yards south of the main manor of Whatfield Hall, owned in the early-16th century by Sir James Hobart, who might well have required a building for this purpose. Whatever its function, the structure was subsequently converted into a normal farmhouse by adding a service cross-wing to its northern gable (a recycled timber-frame of the late-16th century which began its life elsewhere) and by inserting the present chimney to replace a smaller original. The adjacent 17th century barn is also of considerable historic interest as its timber-frame has been re-used from a substantial early-16th century building which contained a ceiling and windows on both floors. Both the house and barn indicate a major 17th century upheaval on the site which involved the conversion of earlier structures of higher status and may mark the creation of Hill Farm (which contained a modest 75 acres in 1844) from land formerly belonging to the nearby manor (S7).