Farmstead record BSG 043 - Farmstead: Smallwood Farm (Slough Farm)

Slough Farm is a farmstead visible on the 1st Ed Os map. The farmstead is laid out in a regular L-plan with the farmhouse attached. There are further detached elements. The farmstead sits alongside a public road in a loose farmstead cluster. There has been a partial loss of working buildings with the remaining converted for residential use. (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.

Smallwood Farm lies in open countryside approximately 400 m east of the medieval hamlet at Smallwood Green but was known until the end of the 19th century as Slough Farm. The stream-fed pond that is likely to have created the eponymous slough still adjoins the road in front of the former farmhouse which is a grade II-listed timber-framed property of the late-16th and early-17th centuries. A large early-17th century threshing barn lies immediately alongside, with a small timber-framed and weatherboarded outbuilding of the same period beyond. This outbuilding was extensively altered in the 19th century and provided with a new roof in the 20th, but remains recognisable as a three-bay structure that was almost certainly designed as a stable. There is no evidence of either windows or a hay loft and it could be interpreted as a neat-house (cow shed), but a stable is far more likely – not least because the field alongside was known as Stable Field in 1843 when the farm was a substantial owner-occupied holding of 115 acres. Small 17th century vernacular stables are notoriously rare, and neat-houses almost unknown, so the building is of considerable historic interest both in itself and as part of a complete linear farmstead of the same period. It extended to three bays with an internal partition dividing a single-bay compartment on the west from a larger compartment of two bays on the east, both entered from an enclosed yard served by a shelter-shed on the south. The shelter-shed was shown on the 1843 tithe map but was demolished in the late-20th century. An original door lintel remains in situ along with externally trenched wall braces, and there is evidence of a lower integral projection from the western gable that was probably a contemporary lean-to shed. The latter was rebuilt in the 19th century when many of the wall studs were renewed, but the key elements of the frame are still intact including the roof-plates, three of the four tie-beams and all eight storey posts – thereby allowing the 17th century structure to be fully understood (S5).