Building record WCB 086 - Meadow Farm Barn, Blacksmith's Green

Meadow Farm Barn is cutilage to the Grade II listed Meadow Farmhouse (National Ref. 1032222). The barn is a tall four-Bay timber-framed and ship-lapped threshing barn with lower attached outbuildings comprising: a single-story byre to the east and south; an attached gabled single storey store to the north east; an attached gabled single storey store to the south west; and a closely adjacent free-standing gabled single storey store to the north west. The barn measures 15.1m in length by 6.2 m in width; the height to the roof or top plate is 3.9m and the height to roof ridge is 7.8m. Bay spacings vary slightly but are approximately an average of 3.8m wide. Archival dating evidence and characteristic features within the barn, particularly the bolted knee braces and the use of smaller than normal sized studs and halved tree trunk rafters indicate the barn is likely to post-date the 1815 Corn Law, and probably dates to the first quarter of the nineteenth century. The Imperial sized red brick plinth is also typical of early 19th century wall construction. The subsidiary parts of the barn including the byre appear to be contemporaneous with or later than the early-mid-nineteenth century date of the main barn building.
The earliest reliable cartographic evidence to an interpretable scale is the Wetheringsett cum Brockford tithe apportionment map of 1841. This shows the plan form and arrangement of the farmhouse and barn that conforms to the same general configuration as exists today. The tithe map clearly shows the barn with north and south courtyard wings enclosing a yard to the lane with a small extended outbuilding to the rear. A moat skirts the rear of the farmhouse and a long narrow ditch and pond is shown outside the site run from north to south opposite the barn on the east side. The map also shows a pond or water filled ditch to the south of the barn and what appear to be S-shaped farm buildings to the southwest. (S1)