Farmstead record BRG 109 - Farmstead: Howardly Charity Farm

Howardly Charity Farm is a farmstead visible on the 1st Ed Os map. The farmstead is laid out in a linear plan with additional detached elements. The farmhouse is detached and set away from the yard. The farmstead sits alongside a public road in a hamlet location. This farmstead survives intact with additional modern sheds on site. (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.

The building shows a baffle - or lobby - entry plan. The introduction of the chimney stack following the medieval period led to this new plan form in which the front door leads into a lobby formed by the side of the stack. There is usually a staircase on the other side of the stack. The chimney occupies a central position, making it possible for the façade to be designed symmetrically around a central front door and allowing two or more rooms to be heated from the same stack. This could be done by placing the stack between the hall and the parlour, often as part of a ‘lobby-entrance plan’ in which the entrance was placed directly in line with the stack, shifting the point of access away from the services towards the ‘upper end’. Lobby-entry houses were built in great numbers in the seventeenth century in much of England, and, though superseded by more modern types, continued to be built at least until the middle of the 20th century (S5) .