Farmstead record SXT 042 - Farmstead: Green Farm

Green Farm is a farmstead visible on the 1st Ed Os Map. The farmstead is laid out in a full regular courtyard plan. The farmhouse is set away from the yard. The farmstead sits alongside a private track in a loose farmstead cluster. This farmstead survives intact with modern sheds to the side (S1-4).

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.

Green Farm adjoins the northern edge of the well preserved medieval Great Green in Saxtead. At the time of the parish tithe survey of 1839 it formed a modest owner-occupied holding of just over 29.5 acres of which approximately 10 were pasture and the rest arable - although it is likely to have posessed additional grazing rights on the green. The grade-II listed former farm-house is a timber-framed, thatched and rendered structure of the early 19th-century which is broadly contemporary with the three bay timber-framed and weather-boarded threshing barn flanking the site entrance on the west. Both were depicted on the tithe map along with a large additional domestic building that probably formed a detached bake-house. This was still present in 1884 but had been demolished by 1903, but its level platform is still visible in front of the existing house. The barn illustrates the sophisticated nature of even relatively small East Anglia examples as it retains a lean-to brick granary alongside its rear porch together with evidence of a stable and a hayloft in its eastern bay. Despite the replacement of its thatch with corrugated iron its walls and roof remain largely intact and the building is accordingly of considerable historic interest. A substantial additional weatherboarded structure with a pantiled roof was built to the north shortly after the tithe survey and combines a stable, cow-shed and granary. Internal graffiti of 1847 offers a close date, and it was probably added at the same time as a much smaller weatherboarded and pantiled shed immediately behind the house. This was built as a pig sty with a narrow yard on the east depicted with three small penson the 1903 Ordnance Survey. The foot print of this yard is now occupied by a modern lean-to addition, and there is evidence of at least one aperture in the brick plinth that allowed piglets to enter the yard without their much larger mothers. The shed was entered by a central door from the east and is likely to have contained small pens and sow beds of which there are no longer any trace. A separate original compartment of 1.2m in width to the north was entered by a separate door and retains an original boarded floor along with a wattle and daub ceiling intended to protect its interior from debris falling from the roof. This appears to narrow for a boar pen and was probably a feed store. Small vernacular pig sties of this kind are often seen on 19th century Ordnance Surveys but rarely survive today (S5).