Farmstead record CRE 024 - Farmstead: Poplar Farm

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Summary

Poplar Farm is a farmstead visible on the 1st Ed OS map. The farmstead is laid out in a full regular H plan with additional detached elements. The farmhouse is also detached and set away from the yard. The farmhouse is set alongside a public road in an isolated location. The farmstead survives intact. 16th century farmhouse and 19th century outbuildings.

Location

Grid reference Centred TM 2320 5963 (65m by 63m)
Map sheet TM25NW
Civil Parish CRETINGHAM, SUFFOLK COASTAL, SUFFOLK

Map

Type and Period (6)

Full Description

Poplar Farm is a farmstead visible on the 1st Ed OS map. The farmstead is laid out in a full regular H plan with additional detached elements. The farmhouse is also detached and set away from the yard. The farmhouse is set alongside a public road in an isolated location. The farmstead survives intact.

16th century farmhouse and 19th century outbuildings.

The two-storey former farmhouse dates from the 16th century but with later alterations and is timber framed with colourwashed render. A roundel on the front of the house is inscribed ‘T.C./1755’. The steeply pitched hipped roof is understood to originally have been thatched but is now covered in large 20th century machine-made concrete interlocking tiles. The entrance front at the right-hand end has a gabled 19th century porch and the façade is fenestrated by a mixture of 19th century and 20th century casement windows to both ground and first floors. Side elevations and extensions also have mainly 20th century windows and modern doors. Some vestiges of pargetting - originally to a wool-knot pattern – are not largely obscured now overlaid by later patching.

The central barn is the largest of the outbuildings. It is a four-bay former threshing barn laid out on a north-northwest to south-southeast alignment. It appears originally to have had two-part cart entry doors to an outshot on the southeast side. There is a modern concrete floor and a partial, red, Imperial-sized, brick plinth of five courses on the southwest wall only. An unsophisticated, vernacular timber frame was erected above this and there is clear evidence of reuse of timbers from elsewhere 11 including wall plates with unused and/or unrelated mortices; short discontinuous sections of beam and unconnected vertical studs. On the southeast side, a lean-to extension was added in the 20th century in concrete blockwork with a clay pantile roof to a shallower pitch and with a doorway in the north wall giving access to a walled cattle yard.
One of the former livestock buildings, now part converted, located northeast of barn postdates 1843 and has a deeper plan (from the lane then originally built. It’s original form had a shallow pitched hipped clay pantile roof and a blank red brick façade divided into three sections by shallow piers on the lane frontage. There were two open fronted bays providing byres for livestock adjacent to the barn. These were later extended and enclosed and fitted with timber double doors and are now covered by a modern powder coated, seamed, section metal roof.
The other former livestock building, now part converted, southwest of barn is shown on the Tithe Map of 1843 and is a single storey building reading as one structure externally but thought originally to have comprised five open bays. The building is clad in black stained vertical boarding to the lane and has a hipped clay pantile roof taller and with steeper roof pitches that outbuilding 4 to the east.
The cartshed and stables is shown on the Tithe Map of 1843 and is a modest five bay, single storey building sitting on a short brick plinth with a simple timber frame and shiplap boarded walls and hipped clay pantile roof. Three of the bays are open-fronted to the north with the two remaining bays partitioned off the form a store.
The former open-fronted shed was a late 20th century open-shelter addition to the south side of the cart lodge but has been demolished (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.

Sources/Archives (4)

  • --- Unpublished document: Campbell, G., and McSorley, G. 2019. SCCAS: Farmsteads in the Suffolk Countryside Project.
  • --- Vertical Aerial Photograph: various. Google Earth / Bing Maps.
  • --- Map: Ordnance Survey. 1880s. Ordnance Survey 25 inch to 1 mile map, 1st edition.
  • <S1> Unpublished document: Kindred, B.. 2017. Heritage Impact Assessment: Poplar Farm Barns, Cretingham, Suffolk.

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Record last edited

Jul 31 2019 11:04AM

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