Farmstead record TMX 024 - Farmstead: Newsons Farm (Read's Farm)

Newsons Farm (Read's Farm), Thorpe Morieux. 19th century farmstead and farmhouse. Regular courtyard U-shaped plan formed by working agricultural buildings. The farmhouse is sdetached facing side on to the yard. Partial loss (less than 50%) of the traditonal 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.

2001: Newsons Farm presents a number of problems for the architectural historian, and, unusually in a house of this period, its original form and subsequent evolution cannot be ascertained with certainty. The difficulty lies in its combination of two entirely separate timber-framed structures, neither of which was designed to associate with the other. At least one, and possibly both frames were built elsewhere in the late-15th and 16th centuries and subsequently moved here in order to create the present farmhouse. The house thus created is typical of a medium-status “two-cell” husbandman’s dwelling of the early-17th century which, despite the loss of its roof and the upper part of its chimney stack, is relatively unaltered and therefore straightforward of interpretation. It preserves several interesting 17th century features, including a brick chimney painted in imitation of studwork. The problems concern the earlier components, which represent only fragments of much larger houses. The earlier of the two is particularly unusual, containing rare features such a gable doorway and ground-floor garderobe, and was apparently constructed as an extension to a medieval house which may have occupied the same site. If this interpretation is correct, the medieval house in question was demolished and replaced in the 17th century with part of a second-hand cross-wing dating in turn from the middle decades of the 16th century (S7).