Farmstead record BTE 044 - Farmstead: Bridge Farm

Bridge Farm is a farmstead visible on the 1st Ed Os map. The farmstead is laid out in a regular courtyard F-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. This farmstaed survives intact with additional modern sheds on the side. (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.

Bridge Farm occupies an isolated position in open countryside to the north of A1141 Lavenham Road, approximately 1.25 km west of Brent Eleigh church and 400 m east of the Lavenham parish boundary. At the time of the tithe survey in 1839 it formed a substantial tenanted holding of 156.5 acres on the extensive East Anglian estate of William Adair Esquire of Flixton Hall near Bungay. No buildings on the property are listed but the layout of the site remains much as depicted on the First Edition Ordnance Survey of 1884 and a number of structures meet the usual criteria for consideration as non-designated heritage assets. Only the house and threshing barn were shown on the tithe map, along with second barn that appears to have been rebuilt or possibly remodelled as an open-sided shelter-shed soon afterwards. The barn is a timber-framed and weatherboarded structure of six bays that forms the northern side of a typical mid-19th century complex of cattle yards and sheds. Its four eastern bays have been much altered but preserve major elements of a 16th or early-17th century predecessor with externally trenched braces and a rear aisle. Two tie-beams contain crown-post mortices in the manner of the early-16th century and before, but may have been re-used in the aisled barn. This structure was extended to the west by two bays in the late-18th or early-19th century when the aisle was removed and replaced by the present central lean-to rear porch as shown on the tithe map. The entire building was re-roofed in the 20th century but retains its original southern wall of unpainted elm weatherboarding preserved within its later lean-to additions and offers a rare insight into the appearance of local farm buildings before the advent of tar later in the 19th century. The original barn is roughly contemporary with the farmhouse which retains part of a jettied western facade, and indicates an abnormal 16th century site layout with the barn behind the house and entered from the field to the rear (instead of facing the house or an adjoining yard as usual). This anomaly may relate to the steep slope of the ground which would have hampered a southern approach from the nearby road. A long red-brick and pantiled cow shed containing three compartments and at least one integral shelter-shed was added in the 1850s or 60s. The resulting complex has been largely stripped of relevant fixtures and fittings but neatly illustrates the yard-based system of mixed animal husbandry known today as Victorian High Farming. It is also of historic significance as the various changes to the barn reflect the two previous revolutions in local agriculture during the Napoleonic wars and the ‘great rebuilding’ of the late-16th and early-17th centuries (S5).