Farmstead record LCS 289 - Farmstead: Upper Abbey Farm

Upper Abbey Farm is a farmstead visible on the 1st Ed Os Map. The farmstead is laid out in a multi-yard pattern with parallel plan, F-plan, and U-plan ranges. The farmhouse is detached and set away from the yard. The farmstead sits alongside a public road in an isolated location. There has been a partial loss of working buildings (1-3).

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.

Upper Abbey Farm lies in open countryside approximately 800 m north-east of the ruins of Leiston Abbey. Until 1795, when it was replaced by a new house now called ‘Leiston Old Abbey’ 400 m to the south, the grade II-listed farmhouse was the centre of a large estate of some 1,500 acres that included the original location of Leiston Abbey (abandoned due to flooding in the mid-14th century). Known in the 18th century as ‘Old Lady Abbey Farm’ it may occupy the site of a monastic ‘home farm’. The farmhouse is a late-17th or early-18th century timber-framed structure encased in red brick with a late-18th century brick addition to the south, and the farm buildings include a separately listed timber-framed and thatched double threshing barn. The latter is described in Historic England’s Schedule as an 18th century structure in six bays with a later rear aisle on the north, but is in fact an historically important fully aisled barn in seven bays that was probably built in its present form in the mid-17th century. Barns with church-like aisles are notoriously rare in the eastern half of Suffolk, and the nearest examples at Snape and Letheringham both occupy monastic sites.

The front aisle was removed in the mid-19th century along with a pair of entrance porches but the rest of the building is largely intact and forms one of the most unusual and visually impressive timber frames in the county. It contains numerous unique features, including a central roof truss with medieval-style soulaces, and a series of spandrel struts seemingly designed to reflect a medieval predecessor. Many individual timbers appear to have been salvaged from this earlier building, and the resulting structural anomalies are sufficient to occupy any timber-framing enthusiast for hours at a time.

The 19th century brick stable in the centre of the site remains unaltered externally and illustrates the scale and quality of such buildings on larger farms, but has been partly converted and largely stripped of its fixtures and fittings. The cart lodge at the southern entrance is a particularly good example of a traditional East Anglian building type which retains 19th century grain bins on its upper storey and a set of dated initials that probably commemorate its construction in 1797. The smaller brick sheds alongside are not of particular significance in themselves but were added as part of a mid-19th century refurbishment that included a now fragmentary cattle yard and illustrate the ‘High Victorian’ system of farming that once dominated Suffolk. A number of educational films were made here in the 1930s when the site was regarded as a complete traditional farmstead that had altered little since the mid-19th century. Most of the buildings featured still survive, albeit in some cases overgrown and in need of repair, and the entire farm is accordingly of particular historic interest (S4).