Farmstead record EBG 102 - Farmstead: Willow Farm

Willow Farm is a farmstead visible on the 1st Ed Os map. The farmstead is laid out in a loose courtyard plan with the farmhouse detached and set away from the yard. The farmstead sits alongside a public road in a village location. There has been a significant 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.

Willow Farm was built on the newly enclosed common land of Bergholt Health shortly after its enclosure in 1817. The gault-brick farmhouse was shown on the 1838 tithe map along with a parallel outbuilding to the rear, at which time it belonged to a smallholding of 3.25 acres owned and occupied by John Sida Constable – a cousin of the artist. The barn is aligned at right-angles to the house and was built in circa 1850-70 along with a small combined granary and pig sty nearby and a red-brick extension to the back of the house. This refurbishment may have occurred when the smallholding became part of the adjoining Highlands estate with which it was sold in 1959 by the name of ‘Willow Dairy’. The weatherboarded and treble-tiled barn is of historic interest as an unusually small and late example of a traditional threshing barn retaining its original half-hung entrance doors to the south. The roof was rebuilt in the 20th century but its walls remain largely intact and consist of re-used timber, including a number of high quality early-16th century moulded joists. The northern wall contains an original narrow rear door instead of the wide cart thoroughfare found in most 19th century barns. Three sheds adjoining this wall appear to have been recently rebuilt in softwood on the footprints of late-19th and early-20th century predecessors (S5).