Farmstead record SSA 022 - Farmstead: Manor Farm

Manor Farm is a farmstead visible on the 1st Ed Os map. The farmstead is laid out in a regular U-plan with additional detached elements. The farmhouse is detached and set away from the yard. The farmstead sits alongside a private track in an isolated location. There has been a partial loss of working buildings with the remaining converted for residential use.

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.

Manor Farm was built as a timber-framed farmhouse in the mid-16th century. The property was known as Manor House in the 19th century and may occupy the site of a medieval manor, although the present structure is not of manorial status. The Tudor building would have contained a central hall flanked to the south by a parlour and to the north by a storage room, but its parlour was rebuilt arounf 1640 to accommodate en an enlarged chimney which still survives. Shortly afterwards a rear wing was added to provide inner bedchambers and a more spacious stair, but the appearance of the house remained irregular, with a tall parlour and a low hall, for more than 100 years. At the turn of the 19th century the external walls were rebuilt in brick, raising the hall to the height of the parlour and the façade has changed little since this time. A new rear dairy wing was built around the same period in the Mock Gothic style, and joined a few decades later by a bakehouse that retains its copper and oven. Construction of the bakehouse allowed the former service room to be converted into a second parlour with an unusual new ceiling of chamfered Gothic beams in 19th century oak and pine. Although little more than the ceiling of the 16th century hall has survived this series of alterations, the house neatly documents the changing nature of English domestic life over four centuries (S1).