Farmstead record DAR 029 - Farmstead: Mill Hill Farm

Mill Hill Farm is a farmstead visible on the 1st Ed OS map. The farmstead is laid out in a regular T-plan with additional detached elements. The farmhouse is detached and set away from the yard. The farmstead sits alongside a public road in an isolated location. There has been significant loss of the working buildings with some modern sheds on site.

The former threshing barn at Mill Hill Farm is an imposing and well preserved late-Georgian structure built to a high standard in red brick with a pantiled roof. It may be contemporary with the facade of the adjacent farmhouse which is understood to bear the date 1780, and it is certainly no later than the beginning of the 19th century. The front and rear walls are pierced by ventilation loops arranged in patterns of three-over-three and the central southern entrance facing the road is an original feature, although the present doors are decayed 19th century replacements and one jamb has been renewed. The oak roof structure is fully tenoned and pegged, consisting of staggered butt-purlins with primary rafter braces in the end-bays, and survives completely intact. The internal floors are of modern concrete with no trace of the boarded or brick threshing floor that would have occupied the central bay. A lean-to rear porch with integral grain bins was added to the northern elevation in the mid-19th century, destroying the small rear door of the original barn. Weatherboarded lean-to sheds lay on both sides of this porch, but only one now remains and has been largely rebuilt. Cartographic evidence and the erratic bonding of the barn’s western gable suggest it was designed to abut a contemporary or earlier building that probably operated as a stable, but this was demolished in the late-20th century. During the late-19th century a grain floor was inserted into the southern half of the barn, supported by massive deal joists cut into the brickwork, but most of this has since been removed. The barn is of considerable historic and visual interest, reflecting the agricultural revolution of the late-18th and early-19th centuries (S1).

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.