Farmstead record RLG 009 - Farmstead: Kiln Farm (Kennel Farm)

Late 16th/early 17th century farmhouse. Timber framed and roughcast-rendered with a roof of concrete pantiles. 2 storeys; the former attic is now disused. The building is in 3-cell form. The ground floor has a mid 20th century flat-roofed addition set forward: large windows and 2 entrance doors. 19th century casements to first floor. Internal stack with rendered shaft; external stack against right gable end. Complete plain studding exposed in first floor rooms, the bracing on the outside face of the studs. The main posts are heavily jowled. In the rear wall are 2 blocked windows with diamond mullions. Both hall and parlour have axial bridging beams and chamfered joists with ogee stops. There are plain joists at service end. Where the mid 20th century addition adjoins the original building the front wall has been removed. Newel stairs up to the second floor but the attic flight have been removed (S1).

2010: A Historic Building Record was produced to supplement an altered conversion scheme that already had planning permission. The report looked at the barn and adjacent building at Kiln Farm. The barn dates to the late 18th or early 19th century and is a timber-framed tructure on an English Bond brick plinth. The barns consists of four bays of different sizes which is unusual. The roof tiles are a modern replacement of the original weatherboarded roof and the original barn doors were lost some time ago. The adjacent western building is a later brick and corrugated iron addition. The structure of this building implies that there was another standing building to the west which is no longer there (S2).

Kiln Farm (Kennel Farm), Redlingfield. 18th century farmstead and 16th century farmhouse with converted buildings. Loose courtyard one-sided plan formed by working agricultural buildings. The farmhouse is set away from the yard. The farmstead is extant. Located within an isolated position (S3-8).

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.

Kiln Farmhouse is a timber-framed and rendered structure dating from the first quarter of the 17th century, and is broadly typical of many built in East Anglia during the agricultural boom of that period. The interior reflected the standard domestic layout of its time, with a hall flanked on the right by a single service (storage) room with a central entrance and on the left by a parlour which operated as the principal bed chamber. The hall was entered by a narrow cross-passage against the service bay, and the house was heated by a large brick chimney in a dedicated bay between the hall and parlour. The windows contained ‘diamond’ mullions, of which several still survive, with internal grooves for sliding wooden shutters. The original fireplaces are now hidden by 20th century replacements, but a large cooking ‘inglenook’ may remain intact in the hall and a smaller, arched fireplace in the parlour. The brickwork of these fireplaces would have been painted with red ochre, traces of which appear to survive beneath the modern plaster, and the oak wall studs were painted grey – possibly with elaborate designs at the top of each infill panel. The upper storey was reached by a newel stair against the front of the chimney in the same manner as the present stair. This stair probably rose to the attic storey, which is an original feature of the house with clear evidence of an original diamond mullion window in its service gable. The clasped-purlin roof may have contained at least one dormer window in its front elevation but any evidence is hidden by a remarkable ceiling of nailed oak boards which hide the rafters. This boarding is an impressive and rare survival with a number of chalk symbols that may be apotropaic in purpose. The threshold of the small parlour-chamber cupboard behind the chimney is also a rare survivor. The framing of the rear elevation is largely intact but the front wall was lost on the lower storey when a flat-roofed front extension was added in the 1960s.
The most historically interesting feature of the building is the small timber-framed lean-to behind the parlour. This is an addition of the mid to late-17th century, which, while small, is well-framed in oak with pegged mortises to its key joints. It contained a window in its rear elevation and was entered from the parlour by a fully framed doorway with neatly chamfered jambs that has since been blocked. This structure would have served as a ‘closet’ or private dressing room to the parlour, and reflects the much larger examples found in high-status gentry houses during the 17th century. Small extensions such as this may have been common in local farmhouses but very few have stood the test of time. The structure has preserved the original whitewashed roughcast daub with which the exterior was initially finished, although the front elevation may have boated more elaborate pargeting beneath its thatched roof (S9).