Farmstead record ESO 036 - Farmstead: Church Fam

Church Farm is a farmstead visible on the 1st Ed OS map. The farmstead is laid out in a parallel plan with additional detached elements. The farmhouse is detached and set away from the yard. The farmstead sits alongside a public road in a village location. This farmstead survives intact with some additional sheds to the site.

The site consists of the present brick farmhouse, reputed to have replaced an earlier building destroyed by fire in 1835, and a T-shaped barn with an eastern entrance porch facing away from the house. This barn survives as an unusually small three-bay structure of the late-16th century, extending to just 9.4 m in length by 5.2 m in width (31 ft by 17 ft), with an original edge-halved and bridled scarf joint in its roof-plate. Small Tudor barns of this kind are far scarcer than larger examples of the same period and the building is accordingly of considerable historic interest. Much of the barn’s wall fabric remains intact, including two internally trenched braces and evidence of a low, narrow rear door facing the house. A small stable already adjoined its southern gable by 1840 and it was further extended during the mid-19th century to form a sophisticated barn complex. Other buildings on the site include a fine mid-19th century red-brick granary which divides the barn from the road. A large area of painted 19th century weatherboarding to the eastern elevation of the barn and the northern cow shed (later converted into a dairy) is also of historic significance as a rare example of grey pigment which illustrates a common treatment of local farm buildings before the use of tar became ubiquitous at the end of the 19th century. The barn was originally thatched however this was replaced with a shallow pitched roof og corrugated asbestos in the mid 20th century (S1).

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.