Farmstead record FLN 103 - Farmstead: Starnacre Farm (Starknaked Farm)

Starknaked Farm is a farmstead visible on the 1st Ed Os map. The farmstead is laid out in a regular E-plan with the farmhouse detached and set away from the yard. The farmstead sits alongside a private track in an isolated location. There has been a partial loss of working buildings (S1-4).

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.

Starnacre Farm, previously part of the Flixton Estate until 1983, comprises a house, formerly two cottages, and a series of barns that originally housed cattle.
The cottages appear from both physical and map evidence to be of Victorian construction, although the unexplained building(s) shown on Hodskinson’s 1783 map and the presence of a moat on the Flixton Estate map of c1800 suggest earlier occupation of the site. The cottages were of simple form, double-fronted with gabled side elevations, constructed of red brick laid in Flemish bond (although sharing a small rear lean‐to in English bond brickwork); red clay pantiled roof with timber bargeboards and cappings; one central shared chimney stack and one end stack per cottage; plain stone lintels to windows. All external joinery to the property is now of modern design and construction.
On the 1883-5 Ordnance Survey map, the plan form of the Starnacre farm buildings is E‐shaped, rather than the F‐shaped range that exists today. The barn complex is constructed from nine inch red brickwork laid in English bond, a course of headers followed by a course of stretchers. The bricks here have horizontal skintlings. These are indentations formed during the drying process and indicate a late eighteenth to late nineteenth century construction date. The character of the bricks suggests the later part of this period. The duo‐pitched red clay pantiled roofs have handsome timber trusses with queen struts, timber bargeboards and cappings and exposed purlins and rafter feet. The roofs on the open sides of these buildings were supported by timber posts on stone or concrete bases. Only one of the barns retains a historic brick floor finish, the other remaining builidngs have modern concrete floors (S5).