Farmstead record WRF 051 - Farmstead: Mill Farm

Mill Farm is a farmstead visible on the 1st Ed Os map. The farmstead is laid out in a regular U-plan range 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. Many of the working buildings have fallen into disuse.

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.

Mill Farm adjoins open countryside on the western side of Westerfield Road approximately 1km north of the Ipswich conurbation. The grade II-listed farmhouse is of special historic interest as its timber-framed western range adjoins an unusually high status late-Elizabethan or Jacobean brick wing with pedimented windows on the east. At the time of the tithe survey in 1839 it was a relatively modest tenanted farm on the estate of the Edgar family based at nearby Red House Park.
The complex of farm buildings to the west of the site is in generally poor condition, having partly collapsed and become overgrown since it was photographed from the air in circa 1990, but includes a substantial timber-framed and weatherboarded five-bay threshing barn of the same period as the house. It is relatively rare for a farmhouse and barn to survive together from such an early date and the building is accordingly of considerable historic value despite its condition. The roof appears to have been replaced as part of a major 19th century refurbishment and has now collapsed along with both southern bays, but the entrance doors remain standing along with sections of a rear porch and the two northern bays. The eastern framing of these bays remains completely intact, with a full complement of oak studs and an externally trenched wall brace, and provides a model from which the rest could be rebuilt if desired. The barn was shown on the 1839 tithe map with now fragmentary brick extensions to both north and south, but a well preserved long range of red-brick cattle sheds represents an addition of the mid-19th century. This range survives in largely original state and in conjunction with the rest of the uniformly pantiled buildings forms a visually distinctive farm complex which illustrates the sophisticated nature of Victorian High Farming in Suffolk (S5)