Building record IXW 177 - Threshing Barn (Plot 3), Dover Farm

The former farmhouse, which is now in separate ownership, is a grade II*-listed 15th century open hall with an imposing Wealden facade and high-status internal features of both the 15th and 16th centuries. The building is shown on a map of 1625 alongside a large ‘Farmeyard’ containing the image of a barn. The approximate site of this barn is now occupied by a grade II-listed timber-framed threshing barn of five bays and a seven-bay ‘barn’ adjoining the road that was designed as a neat-house (cow-house) with a first-floor granary. The threshing barn is dated to the mid-18th century in the Schedule of Listed Buildings but both structures are typical of the early-19th century and are conspicuous by their absence from the Ixworth enclosure map of circa 1800. The neat-house bears the incised name ‘C. Fyson’ on an internal post alongside the date 1799, and the threshing barn the same name dated 1801. Its timber frame survives largely intact, with identical carpentry features to those of the neat-house including a high proportion of re-used timber. These features are typical of the many barns that were rebuilt in Suffolk in response to the agricultural boom of the Napoleonic period, with a combination of traditional arch-bracing and newly fashionable bolted knee-braces to increase headroom. An original rear porch against the southern elevation was demolished in the 1960s or 70s, and the weatherboarding has been renewed in softwood (S1).