Building record TYY 078 - Mill Farmhouse

Mill Farmhouse is a grade II-listed timber-framed and rendered building which lies in open countryside approximately 0.5 km east of St Mary’s church and 150 m west of the A14 dual carriageway which bisected its farmland in the 1970s. At the time of the tithe survey in 1839 it was a large holding of 154.25 acres (by the standards of its day), including the field adjoining an eponymous watermill 0.5 km to the north-east. In its current form the property is a relatively well preserved late-Georgian house of circa 1820 with uniform sash windows and a number of contemporary features such as fire surrounds, cornices and a good stick-baluster staircase. The Schedule of Listed Buildings dates it to the 18th century, but this Georgian appearance derives only from an extensive remodelling of two earlier structures. The section to the east (left) of the mid-19th century central porch was built in the late-17th century (or possibly the early-18th), re-using many old timbers, but the area to the west represents a fragment of an important gentry house of the mid-16th century that appears to have occupied an entirely different axis and extended further to the north. This part of the house preserves one of the largest and most impressive Tudor cellars in the county, and evidence of an enormous window that spanned the entire 29 ft (8.8 m) of its southern elevation. Part of this window is intact on the first floor above the Georgian staircase, complete with roll-moulded mullions, and identical mullions survive elsewhere behind later plaster. The Tudor structure contained a large chamber on its upper storey, and presumably on the lower where no evidence is visible, together with a narrow bay on the east that contained an external door and appears to have accommodated an original staircase in a highly unusual and sophisticated manner. Its southern wall is now adjoined by a much altered bake-house that was shown as a detached building on a map of 1807 but was linked to the farmhouse as part of the 19th century refurbishment and still preserves external pargeting on the landing of the back stair. The 17th century hall against its eastern wall contains a wide cooking fireplace but was reduced in size as part of the same process by inserting a narrow storage cupboard which now conceals the external door and a moulded window of the Tudor house (S1).