Site Event/Activity record ESF20702 - Farm buildings at Red House Farm, Elmsett

Red House Farm lies in open countryside on the northern slope of a picturesque shallow valley of a tributary of Belstead Brook. The farm buildings form an enclosed yard approximately 25 metres north-east of a substantial, grade II listed, timber- farmhouse which is described as a 'medieval hall house'. At the time of the Elmsett tithe survey in 1842 the farm was a modest owner-occupied arable holding of 66 acres. The yard is flanked on the north by an impressive timber-framed and weatherboarded range with a steeply pitched slate roof of 30.7 m in length, and by a pair of open-sided pantiled shelter-sheds to the east and west. The shelter-sheds incorporate enclosed feed-stores and four additional storage sheds are housed in a narrow integral red-brick lean-to. The eastern section of the northern range forms a stable with a first-floor granary entered by an external door, while a five-bay barn with a gabled northern porch lies to the west. The resulting complex of eleven separate units represents a largely intact 'model' farm of circa 1860 which illustrates the sophisticated nature of the system of yard-based mixed animal husbandry now known as 'Victorian High Farming'. It replaced a scattered group of farm buildings shown in 1842, but incorporates a four-bay timber-framed barn of circa 1820 that reflects the cereal boom of the Napoleonic era. The complex is accordingly of considerable historic interest as it demonstrates the dramatic change between the two key periods of agricultural revolution in 19th century Suffolk.