Building record HEN 022 - Brook House Farmhouse (Broad Green Farm)

The symmetrical late-Georgian elegance of the western façade at Brook House Farm would grace the principal street of any English town, but disguises a more complicated pattern of evolution within. The combination of high-quality white brick and fashionable slate is typical of the 1820s and 1830s, and is a fine and exceptionally well preserved example of its type. The sash windows and central door case are entirely original, unlike many others in the region which saw their small panes enlarged by the Edwardians. White brick was expensive relative to red, and extends to the southern elevation but not to the rear or to the eastern elevation. The junction between the two is decorated with a chevron pattern which displays a rare degree of quality in a rural farmhouse. Decoration of this kind, which departs from the Classical tradition, is more often found in Victorian houses, and suggests the building is probably later rather than earlier in its range. This is confirmed by the complicated profile of the property on the Henley tithe map of 1838, which does not appear to show its existing western outline, and a construction date of circa 1840 can be posited with some confidence. The Ordnance Survey of 1902 also shows a large projection from the front elevation that presumably represents an enclosed porch, but this is absent from the earlier edition of 1883 and was evidently a later addition that has since been removed.

The interior of the western range is as well preserved as its exterior, with a fine ‘stick’ baluster staircase and mahogany hand rail rising from a central stair passage. The fire surrounds of the right-hand ground and first-floor rooms are also original. The rear part of the house is a very different structure which pre-dates the front range by as much as two centuries. While most of its fabric is hidden by later plaster, a number of clues to its original nature can be found. The ceiling joists in the cupboard behind the kitchen chimney are flatsectioned in the usual manner of the 17th century, and the proportions of the chamfered binding joists and the chimney itself are consistent with this period. The distinctive profile of a jowled storey post, similar to those of the barn, is visible behind wallpaper in the southwestern corner of the corridor immediately behind the front range. This feature indicates that the original timber-framed walls rose only to the height of the present ceiling in the same corridor, and were subsequently raised. The proportions of this 1½ storey building are found in many mid-status 17th century farmhouses in Suffolk, and it may well have represented a complete house with the usual tripartite layout (i.e. a central hall divided by a large chimney with back-to-back fireplaces from a parlour to the north – the present kitchen – and with a pair of storage rooms at the opposite southern end). It is perhaps more probable, however, that it simply formed the ‘backhouse’ or service range of a more substantial building on the site of the 19th century western range. Such an interpretation would be more consistent with the 1838 outline, which seems to show another longer building where the white brick range now stands, and with the relatively high status of the farm: a holding of approximately 100 acres, which Broadgreen Farm possessed in 1838, conveyed Yeoman status in the 17th century and expectations of a substantial two-storied house. The question can only be settled by the drastic expedient of stripping the walls of the rear wing and hoping that sufficient evidence survived its later changes (S1).