Farmstead record PRH 046 - Farmstead: Elm Tree Farm (Green Farm)

Green Farm is a farmstead visible on the 1st Ed Os map. The farmstead is laid out in a dispersed plan. The farmhouse is detached and set away from the yard. This farmstead sits alongside a private track in a loose farmstead cluster. There has been a significant loss of working buildings with modern sheds on site. The farmhouse has been divided and converted to two residential dwellings.

The site consists of a grade II-listed timber-framed former farmhouse of the late-16th or early-17th century facing the green with a complex of farm buildings including a threshing barn on the south and a detached ‘barn’ which forms the subject of this report in a paddock of 0.75 acres to the rear (east). the paddock and the barn were shown on the 1840 map and it was built shortly before as a timber-framed and weatherboarded neat-house (cow-shed) of four bays with a pantiled roof. It initially adjoined a small enclosed yard flanked by a second building of similar scale on the east. This second building was demolished early in the 20th century and the yard subsequently provided with a roof of corrugated iron. The structure was entered from the yard by a central door and contained a hay rack and manger against the opposite wall in the usual manner with a hay loft or granary throughout. There is no evidence of original windows which indicates along with its relatively isolated position that it was designed for cattle rather than horses. Despite the loss of its internal loft and the renewal of almost all the studs and braces of its western wall and gables, the building remains essentially intact with its original clasped-purlin roof structure, layout and general appearance. As a field neat-house within its original paddock at some distance from the main farm complex, exactly as in 1840, it represents a relatively rare survival and is accordingly of local historic interest (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.