Farmstead record FML 181 - Farmstead: Lampardbrook Farm

Lampardbrook Farm is a farmstead visible on the 1st Ed OS map. The farmstead is set alongside a private track in an isolated location. The farmstead is laid out in a regular courtyard F-plan with additional detached elements. The farmhouse is detached and set away from the yard. There has been a partial loss of working buildings with the rest converted for residential use (S1-3).

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 former farmhouse is listed at grade II as an early-19th century building with a 16th century service wing to the rear. The timber-framed and pantiled farm buildings consist of a medium-sized early-19th century threshing barn of some 48 feet in length with a contemporary or slightly older cow shed on one side and a small stable of the same date on the other. All three structures were shown on the tithe map of 1842 and represent a largely complete ‘Napoleonic’ farmstead of considerable historic interest. The cow shed is only 11.5 feet wide and represents an unusual survival, complete with low hay racks against both gables, while the stable preserves a good set of evil-averting ‘daisy wheels’ incised into the wattle-and-daub of its hay loft. The original whitewashed ‘two-tier’ external cladding of the stable has been preserved within a slightly later cart shed and offers an important insight into the appearance of local farm buildings before the advent of tar during the second half of the 19th century. The barn retains two sets of ostensibly original half-hung doors, an unusual brick floor in one of its outer bays and a pair of grain bins with evidence of suspended timber floors flanking its lean-to rear porch. The Ordnance Surveys and a mid-20th century aerial photograph show a series of typical ‘High Victorian’ additions forming cattle yards on both sides of the barn, but with the exception of a late-19th century brick shelter-shed most of these have since been demolished. Despite the relatively large scale of its barn the farm contained a modest 20.5 acres in 1842 of which less that 4 were arable, and its owner appears to have derived most of his income from an adjoining brick kiln while leasing a further 20 acres to a tenant. A separate complex of outbuildings that probably served this brick-making business stood beside the farm pond but was also lost in the late-20th century (S4).