Farmstead record BTY 060 - Farmstead: Malting Farm

Malting Farm is a farmstead visible on the 1st Ed Os map. The farmstead is laid out in a linear plan with the farmhouse 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 the remaining converted for residential use. (S2-5)

Malting Farm is a grade II-listed timber-framed house of considerable historic interest. Dating from the beginning of the 16th century the surviving structure represents two-thirds of a typical mid-status farmhouse of that period, containing a hall and parlour but lacking the usual buttery and pantry. These missing service rooms probably lay in a separate cross-wing retained from the medieval house on the site but subsequently demolished. The ‘new’ hall illustrates the revolution in domestic housing which swept England in the early Tudor period and saw the replacement of smoky, draughty medieval halls (open to their roofs and heated only by bonfire-like open hearths) with fireplaces and ceilings. The hall at Malting Farm originally extended to 19 feet in length and possessed a chimney against its back wall, but as expectations of domestic comfort increased still further during the 17th century this was in turn replaced by the present chimney with back-to-back fireplaces. The Tudor parlour at the warmer western end of the house operated as a bedroom but was not heated initially. The upper storey formed a storage area which was open to its plain crown-post roof in the manner of a barn, and completely undivided before the insertion of the present chimney. The associated farmland extended to a modest 28.5 acres in 1841, and the large scale of its outbuildings, as shown on 19th century maps, suggests, like its name, that Malting Farm was one of many in the region engaged in the commercial production of malt (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.