Farmstead record SUT 299 - Farmstead: Pettistree Hall

Pettistree Hall is a farmstead visible on the 1st Ed Os map. The farmstead is laid out in a linear plan with additional detached elements. The farmhouse is detached and set away from the yard. The farmstead sits alongside a private track in an isolated location. There has been a partial loss of working buildings with modern sheds on site.

The site is depicted on William Haiward's map of 1629 which depicts the grade II-listed Elizabethan manor house within a square moat. Two buildings aligned at right-angles that were probably a threshing barn and stable adjoined this moat to the north-east and formed the corner of an outer courtyard labelled ‘the Entrey’ through which the house was approached. The barn appears to have survived in 1974 and was listed, but has since been demolished, and the stable was rebuilt in circa 1820. At the time of the parish tithe survey in 1844 the property was a large ‘gentry’ farm of just under 231 acres of chiefly arable land occupied by a descendant of its 16th century owner. The present farm buildings to the east of the entrance track form an unusually long red-brick range of uniform stables and shelter-sheds adjoining a walled horse yard on one side and a paddock on the other. The resulting complex consists of three principal structures of different periods: the Georgian stable of circa 1820 that formed the corner of the base court; a central Victorian shelter-shed of 10 bays probably of 1882 (as painted on a roof timber), and a high quality Edwardian stable range to the south. The latter is now shown on the Ordnance Survey of 1904 but was almost certainly built when the Quilter family added Pettistree Hall to their Sutton estate before 1911. The Georgian stable is an impressive example of its kind with a hay loft and an exceptionally well preserved lean-to tack room that retains most of its original wooden harness hooks. Its undivided interior also retains an original ceiling with a rear hay drop, and its symmetrical western facade is largely complete with a central entrance flanked by windows, loft hatches and internal lamp recesses (but now partly hidden by a 20th century lean-to extension). The 19th century walls of the horse yards are also of historic interest as they consist chiefly of septaria nuggets mined from the Felixstowe cliffs before the resulting coastal erosion put an end to their extraction (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.