Building record HEV 024 - Willow Farmhouse, Halesworth Road

The timber-framed and rendered structure is of considerable historic interest as an exceptionally well preserved early-17th century farmhouse of rare transitional plan which appears to combine a standard door in the cross-passage position with an early lobby entrance. Despite its size and high quality, with finely chamfered ceilings on both floors, it possessed only two ‘cells’, with a hall and parlour of equal size divided by a central chimney. Its services were evidently contained in a missing structure that overlapped its front corner and formed a base court in imitation of those found on higher status sites. Similar arrangements are commonly depicted on 17th century maps but rarely survive. The central chimney is a replacement of the mid-17th century with three impressive octagonal flues with moulded bases that have largely escaped the extensive alteration typically found on such features elsewhere and accordingly represents one of the finest examples of its kind in the region. The interior of the house was much altered in the 20th century, particularly to the west of the chimney, but retains substantial traces of 17th century wall painting and a badly re-pointed but original arched first-floor fireplace. One of the two ground-floor fireplaces was ostensibly rebuilt in the 18th or 19th century and re-faced in circa 2000, but the other, while altered, retains much of its original character. The present staircase dates from the refurbishment of 1957, which included most of the present windows and involved a high degree of craftsmanship, but the internal partitions ostensibly belong only to the recent restoration (S1).

2018: A written and photographic record at English Heritage (2006) Levels 2 and 3 was undertaken of Willow Farm Barn adjacent to Willow Farmhouse. Willow Farm Barn forms part of the Willow Farmyard complex. The farm lies in open countryside approximately 750 m east of Heveningham parish church and is reached by an unmade track from Halesworth Road to the north. The property consists of the Farmhouse to the south with a range of barns to the north. It was previously known as Low Farm and formed part of the Heveningham Hall estate until the early-20th century. The Farmhouse is grade II- listed and is of timber frame construction with a two cell layout under a pegtile roof with later extensions. At the time of the tithe survey in 1840 it was farmed in conjunction with Gothic Farm 500m to the north-west, and was depicted as a pair of cottages on the Ordnance Surveys of 1882 and 1951. It was refurbished and extended as a single dwelling in 1957, and extended again in 2000.
The farmyard sits facing onto the farmhouse across from the access drive. It consists of a large timber
frame threshing barn with side wings to the north forming a T-shape plan. A further court yard is of
mid-20th Century construction. The farmyard has followed a similar evolution to the house, with the
extension of the threshing barn and development of the northern yard over the course of the late 19th and 20th Centuries.
The main barn is of the late 16th century and of hard wood timber frame construction with weather boarded sides over a brick plinth. Internally the frame is exposed apart from one bay which has remnants of wattle and daub construction. The two side wings are also timber frame but of later construction in soft wood. The main barn is 6.8m wide and 16.9m long and has double doors in the north and south gable ends under a roof which was formerly thatched, but latterly tiled and is now been stripped down to the battens. (S2)