Farmstead record SFF 027 - Farmstead: Yewtree Farm

Yewtree Farm is a farmstead visible on the 1st Ed Os map. The farmstead is laid out in a regular U-plan with additional detached elements. The farmhouse is detached and set away from the yard. The farmstead sits alongside a public road in an isolated location. The farmstead survives intact with conversion for residential use.

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.

1998: The centre of Yew Tree Farmhouse is a mid-16th century timber-framed building. Other rooms were built around the frame in the 17th and 18th centuries. Circa 1850 two new rooms, a staircase, and a new front door were built at the southern end of the building and the whole of the front of the house was cased in brick. From the outset the hall included a sub-dividing floor to create a solar or hall chamber above, with a cross=passage and a wooden screen. A woodemn smoke hood or bay at one oend carried the smoke from the fire up past the solar to the tatched roof and there are no signs of smoke desposits on the wall. Not long after a rectangular timber parlour was added with another solar or chamber above, and later still the smoke hood or bay was replaced by a substantial chimney stack which had at least three and possibly four hearths. The height of the ceilings in the ground floor rooms point to a builder who was a well-off yeoman. The upper solars or chambers were used for the storage of tools and crops and not for sleeping accommodation until the 17th century. The upper rooms were not ceilinged but open to the roof and reached by a steep staircase from a cross passage (S1).