Farmstead record LMD 350 - Farmstead: Ford Hall

Ford Hall is a farmstead visible on the 1st Ed Os map. The farmstead is laid out in a regular courtyard U-plan 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. 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.

Ford Hall is a picturesque and historically important timber-framed house on a moated site that belonged to the knightly de Beauchamp family in the 13th century.The northern arm of the moat was lost in the 19th century when the present entrance was created, and the site was formerly approached via an eponymous ford on the Chad Brook to the east. The present house
was built in the 1530s by Richard Clopton, a younger son of the nationally significant Sir William Clopton of Kentwell Hall. It consists of a continuously jettied hall and parlour cross-wing that was originally built against an older service cross-wing on the left retained from its medieval predecessor. This service wing was later replaced by an unusual 19th century brick structure that contains the modern kitchen but appears from early photographs to have been designed as a barn. Two exceptionally early maps accurately depict the building’s appearance in 1580 and 1613. Despite a heavy ‘restoration’ between 1975 and 1983, which including the removal of the parlour ceiling to accommodate a new staircase, the building offers an unusual insight into the scale and sophistication of local gentry houses in the mid-16th century. Expectations of domestic comfort and privacy were rising quickly at this period, as reflected by the early replacement of an original external covered stair by a jettied ‘closet’ wing – probably encouraged by Richard Clopton’s production of ten children including a daughter who married Sir William
Cordell, the builder of Melford Hall. The property was acquired by the Melford Hall Estate in the 1560s and became a tenanted farm of some 200 acres until the 20th century, which explains its survival. A detailed inventory of 1663 names its various rooms and allows their functions to be fully understood. The farm buildings shown within the moat to the north of the house in 1613 were replaced by a good early-19th century complex to the west that was fully detailed on a plan of the 1850s, but this was partly demolished during the restoration (S5).