Farmstead record WLW 145 - Farmstead: Old Hall

Old Hall, Walsham-le-Willows. 19th century farmstead and 18th century farmhouse. Regular courtyard multi-yard plan formed by working agricultural buildings. The farmhouse is set away from the yard. Partial loss (less than 50%) of the traditional farm buildings. Located within an isolated position (S1-6).

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.

Old Hall lies in open countryside approximately 2.5 km east of St Mary's Church in Walsham, close to its boundary with Westhorpe. The property was a large arable holding of 215 acres known as Walsham Hall Farm when it was sold in 1806, but became Walsham Old Hall and then simply Old Hall during the mid-19th century. The famously comprehensive manorial records of the parish reveal it was originally called Coopers after the 14th century occupants of the site, but at the end of the 17th century it became the residence of Captain John Hunt, Esquire, formerly of Cambridge. Hunt was a wealthy gentleman who purchased the parish tithes from the lords of the manor, the Bacons, and was therefore responsible for repairing the chancel of the church which is still dominated by Hunt memorials. Coopers was rebuilt in on a grand scale in expensive brick and boasted 10 hearths in 1674, representing by far the largest house in Walsham. As the lay rectory it was the only one worthy of depiction on Kirby's map of Suffolk in 1736. It became known as Walsham Hall since the medieval manor house of that name near the church no longer existed. The present house preserves a
much altered red-brick wing that would have represented the height of fashion in the late-17th century when most local buildings were timber-framed. It appears to have lost its gentry status in 1758 on the death of Elizabeth Hunt, John Hunt9s unmarried granddaughter, and its name followed suit when a new Walsham Hall was eventually built in the village. The Ordnance Survey published in 1838 (but surveyed up to 20 years before) shows an additional wing that had vanished by 1842 along with the predecessor of the impressive early-19th century double threshing barn. A single-storied late-17th century timber-framed building that was probably designed as a detached bake-house with carved ceiling corbels survives in the rear service wing. In the early part of the 19th century both this and the main house were given extensive makeovers in the Gothic Revival style with applied Tudor hood mouldings and decorative flint-work. Few original fixtures or fittings remain, but the many changes occasioned by its reduction in scale have created an unusually interesting palimpsest that played an important if forgotten role in the history of the parish (S7).