Building record UBB 039 - Green Valley Farm, Laxfield Road

Green Valley Farm is a well-preserved timber-framed building of the late-16th century that contains an historically significant plaster overmantel of 1678. Lying on the edge of the parish, some 200 yards from the border with Laxfield, its original layout and construction is typical of many late-Elizabethan farmhouses in Suffolk, reflecting the agricultural boom of the period. Floored throughout in the latest style, unlike the medieval building that it probably replaced, it contained a central hall flanked to the east by a pair of storage rooms and to the warmer west by a parlour where the head of the household would have both slept and entertained his guests. The house was entered by a cross-passage from the direction of the farmyard to the south, rather than the adjacent road to the north, and was heated by a pair of back-to-back fireplaces in a brick chimney between its hall and parlour. The timber frame was exposed inside the building, as it remains today, but was always hidden externally by a coat of lime render, and lit by a mixture of traditional unglazed and shuttered windows and newly fashionable glazed examples with hollow-moulded mullions. A number of blocked windows of both varieties still retain their original mullions, and the uniquely East Anglian ‘Queen Post’ roof survives above. The Elizabethan building illustrates a transitional stage in the development of the English house, and the evidence of a major refurbishment in the 17th century, which sought to meet increased expectations of domestic comfort, is of particular historic interest. Ceilings were inserted for the first time on the upper storey in order to create new bedrooms that were heated by additional fireplaces in a chimney that was entirely rebuilt to accommodate them The ends of the hipped roof were extended to form vertical gables at the same time, and a new ‘lobby’ entrance created beside the new chimney. This refurbishment almost certainly occurred in 1678, which date appears on a fine plaster overmantel in the hall chamber, together with typical 17th century decorative devices such as fleurs-de-lis, ‘Tudor’ roses , vine trails and the ownership initials P over I K (where P would normally represent a surname, with the initials of a married couple beneath). While such overmantels were once common, this example is a rare and important survival which may preserve contemporary pigment beneath its later whitewash. The two blocked fireplaces of the upper storey may retain additional 17th century decorative treatment.
The landscape context of the farmhouse is also of historic interest as the site includes an impressive and unusually intact three-bay barn of the early-17th century and a 19th century cartlodge that incorporates earlier timber (S1).