Farmstead record LXD 129 - Farmstead: White House Farm

White House Farm, Laxfield. 19th century farmstead and 15th century listed farmhouse. Dispersed cluster plan formed by working agricultural buildings. The farmhouse is set away from the yard. Partial loss (under 50%) of the traditional farm buildings. Located within a loose farmhouse cluster (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.

The barn at White House Farm is a timber-framed and weatherboarded structure in three bays built in or about the 1820s to serve a modest tenanted holding of 28.5 acres. Its corrugated iron roof structure is a 20th century replacement but its wall framing remains largely intact and the building is of considerable historic interest for a number of reasons. It probably reflects the layout of the farm associated with the adjacent former farmhouse which is an important grade II*-listed early-15th century open hall with a rare queen post roof. Both the barn and hall were entered from a yard that lay to the rear of the present house which separated it from the road. The barn also illustrates a transitional phase in the development of local carpentry, combining arch-braced tie-beams in the medieval tradition with jowl-less posts of a type normally associated with 19th century-style knee-braces. Its rebuilding in circa 1820 probably on a larger scale than its predecessor records the local increase in cereal as opposed to dairy production in the wake of the Napoleonic wars. Two pantiled mid-19th century cow sheds against its back wall are also of interest as they reflect the subsequent introduction of the yard-based system of mixed animal husbandry known today as Victorian High Farming (S7).