Farmstead record CLO 065 - Farmstead: Moat Hall Farm

Moat Hall Farm is a farmstead visible on the 1st Ed OS map. The farmstead is laid out in a regular F-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 (25%) of working buildings (S1-3).

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.

The large barn is a timber-framed structure of eight bays which was built in two stages. The north part of the building formed a five-bay threshing barn that was constructed in the late eighteenth century. The structure was composed of primary-braced walls and a two-tier staggered butt-purlin roof. The barn possessed a central threshing bay. A further three bays were constructed to the south in the early nineteenth century to form a double threshing barn.
The small barn is a timber-framed structure of three bays that was constructed as a hay barn in the late sixteenth century and may be the only known hay barn in the country to survive substantially intact from the sixteenth century. The building was converted into animal housing in the late eighteenth or early nineteenth century (S4).