Farmstead record THD 039 - Farmstead: Thorndon Hill Farm

Thorndon Hill Farm, Thorndon. 19th century farmstead and 17th century farmhouse. Regular courtyard T-shaped plan formed by working agricultural buildings. The farmhouse is set away from the yard. The farmstead is extant. Located within a loose farmstead cluster (S1-6).

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.

Thorndon Hill Farm occupies the moated site of the medieval manor of Little Thorndon on the western side of the B1077 between Eye and Debenham. The present grade II-listed house is a large structure of the early-17th century that faces west towards the moat and the site of a demolished complex of farm buildings shown on a 1738 map of its 253 acre estate. The property belonged to the Barnardiston family in the 19th century, and the 1840 tithe map depicts a smaller range of outbuildings to the east that was replaced in the 1850s or 60s by the present pantiled threshing barn and stables. The original farm buildings within the moat were demolished at the same time, and the present site entrance created to the east of the house. The barn is a timber-framed and weatherboarded structure of five bays with a central entrance that consists almost entirely of re-used timber from a high quality early-17th century barn with a butt-purlin roof of identical form to that of the farmhouse (as described in Historic England’s listing schedule). This timber was almost certainly salvaged from the previous barn inside the moat and indicates a major refurbishment of the entire site for ‘Thomas Cullum of The Hill in Thorndon, gentleman’, who was lord of Little Thorndon manor and died in 1638/9. This represents the present barn’s chief historic significance, although it retains a number of characterful wooden pulley wheels relating to 19th or early-20th century farm machinery above the 20th century loft that now fills its interior. The impressively long single-storied shed of 30 m to the north of the site was designed as a stable and also consists largely of re-used timber (albeit less recognisable that that of the barn). Its walls are of uniform red-brick where they face the road, with cheaper weatherboarded studwork to the south, and the building originally contained a series of stables, stalls and chaff boxes divided by boarded and daubed partitions. All but one of these partitions has since been removed to create two large compartments, windows have been inserted into the blind roadside elevation and no historic fixtures or fittings survive. Much of the roof has also been rebuilt. An L-shaped range of single-storied pantiled sheds in the south-western corner of the site probably originated as a small stable and shelter-shed. It appears to incorporate part of a flint-rubble wall that may pre-date 1840 but has also been much altered (S7).