Building record SXM 021 - Hall Farm, Saxmundham

The two brick farm buildings recorded herein formerly belonged to Hurts Hall, a fine Victorian red brick mansion in the Elizabethan style which replaced the previous house on the site after its destruction by fire in 1890. The property lay in extensive parkland 450 metres south of the parish church and from the 17th century until the 1950s belonged to the Long family, whose wealth derived chiefly from Jamaican plantations. The site can be equated with the medieval manor of Hurtz or Hurts held by Roger Bigot at Domesday, and preserves a number of early-19th century outbuildings of gentry status including a fine stable block with a turret clock to which a domestic house was attached in the early-20th century. The two structures to the east of this stable are now in separate ownership and were built as part of a new yard complex in circa 1870. The northernmost building is now fragmentary, with its western half demolished in recent years and its remaining fabric extensively mutilated, rendering any precise interpretation impossible. It appears to have been designed in part as a potting shed associated with an adjacent walled garden, and retains a finely detailed doorway. The building to the west is an impressive two-storied granary with a series of vehicle sheds on its ground floor. Although little altered externally, its original grain bins and other fixtures and fittings have been lost, and neither building is of sufficient age or historic interest to justify separate listing (S1).