Farmstead record LMD 244 - Farmstead: Guildhall Farm

Guildhall Farm is a farmstead visible on the 1st Ed Os map. The farmstead is laid out in a loose courtyard plan with additional detached elements. The farmhouse is detached and set away from the yard. The farmstead sits alongside a public road in a hamlet location. There has been a significant loss of working buildings with modern sheds on site. (S2-5)

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.

Guildhall Farm adjoins open countryside at the southern end of the village of Long Melford in the south-eastern quarter of the crossroads known as Rodbridge Corner. This area formed a small hamlet in the Middle Ages, as depicted on a 1613 map of the parish which shows a small structure in the approximate position of the 19th century shed forming the subject of this report. The hamlet was much reduced in size by the time of the parish tithe survey in 1839 which describes Guildhall Farm as a mid-scale tenanted holding of 53.5 acres. The tithe map shows an earlier farmhouse on the site of the current red-brick house, which was built in circa 1860 in conjunction with a new complex of farm buildings flanking the site entrance to the south. These buildings survived largely intact until the 1960s but were then replaced by a series of cement-block pig sheds. The only remaining elements of the Victorian complex are the northern wall of the cement-block sheds to the north of the present entrance track and a single shed in close proximity to the house. This shed extends to 9.6 m in length by 6.7 m in width (31.5 ft by 22 ft) and retains an original pair of double doors in its southern gable. It formerly faced a cart lodge on the opposite side of the track and was apparently designed as a large shed for agricultural equipment such as threshing machinery. It may also have served as a feed store and was linked to an enclosed yard on the west that probably held cattle. The southern doors are accordingly of some historic and visual interest, but in other respects the structure has been much altered and is of limited historic significance. An internal ceiling was inserted in the early-20th century, blocking the doors, and the entire roof structure was renewed as part of an extensive refurbishment in circa 1980 which included the rebuilding of the eastern wall. There is no evidence that this shed ‘probably dates back over 200 years’, as claimed in the Design and Access Statement accompanying the application for conversion, nor of the ‘stable bricks’ mentioned in the same source (S1).