Farmstead record SOT 025 - Farmstead: Golding's Farm

Golding's Farm is a farmstead visible on the 1st Ed Os map. The farmstead is laid out in a regular full-plan with the farmhouse detached and set away from the yard. The farmstead sits alongside a public road in a loose farmstead cluster. This farmstead survives intact though the working buildings are in a state of disrepair (S1-5).

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.

Goldings Farm lies on the eastern edge of Sotterley parish and is bisected by its boundary with Henstead, which passes through the complex of farm buildings to the north of a grade Ii listed early-19th century red-brick farmhouse in the Mock Gothic style. The property was one of several tenanted holdings on the large Sotterley Hall estate owned by the Barne familyfrom 1744 until the present, and both the house and the barn to the north of the farm yard mayhave been rebuilt in response to the enclosure of rough grazing in the parish to create morearable land in 1796. The barn is a large and impressive red-brick structure which extends to33.5 m (110 ft) in length and contains a central threshing area of five bays flanked by integralstables with hay lofts at both ends. It includes a rear aisle and two sheds that were linked tothe stables by arched doorways and probably served as tack rooms. Each stable was entered by a central door with a window on each side and hay drops against its gables, while the walls of the barn, sheds and hay lofts were pierced by ventilation apertures resembling medieval arrow loops. The intact roof structure of staggered butt-purlins covered in modern corrugated asbestos is shallow-pitched, suggesting it was formerly pantiled to match the farmhouse, and its unusually large knee-braces resemble the arch-braces found in barns of the 18th century and before. The building illustrates the sophisticated nature of barns on large estates at the turn of the 19th century and can be compared with some of the best agricultural architecture found in the newly fashionable ‘model’ farmsteads of the period. Despite its historic interest it was extensively mutilated by the insertion of grain silos and milling machinery in the 20th century, losing both stable ceilings, and probably fails to meet the strict English Heritage criteria for listing in its own right. A series of brick cattle sheds and shelters was added to the southern elevation in the mid-19th century, reflecting the new yard-based system of mixed animal husbandry known today as Victorian High Farming These buildings include a granary that appears to retain part of a timber-framed predecessor that was shown along with the barn on the tithe map of 1843 (S6).