Monument record HEV 031 - Farmstead: Willow Farm (Low Farm)

Low Farm is a farmstead visible on the 1st Ed OS map. The farmstead is laid out in a regular T-plan with the farmhouse 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.

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.

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 threshing barn is aligned north south so that the long north-west elevation faces onto the more recent yard to the north. This elevation is especially long because of the two side wings which have been appended to this end of the building.The main barn is of the late sixteenth 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 (S4)