Farmstead record HRK 122 - Farmstead: Sparrow Hall

Sparrow Hall is a farmstead visible on the 1st Ed Os map. The farmstead is laid out in a dispersed plan. The farmhouse is detached and set away from the yard. The farmstead sits alongside a public road in an isolated location. Only the farmhouse remains. (1-4)

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.

Sparrow Hall is a timber-framed farmhouse of probable early-mid 17th century origin, constructed on a three-cell lobby-entrance plan with later 19th-century additions. The building retains significant architectural features including chamfered bridging beams, jowled corner posts, and a pointed arch bressumer beam in the hall fireplace. The roof was originally thatched, now replaced with pantiles. Internal alterations in the 19th century included the addition of staircases and partition walls, but the overall plan remains largely intact. An associated outbuilding to the front of the hall, originally a stable or store, was later converted into a bakehouse and washroom in the late 18th to early 19th century. It retains a large bread oven, copper wash stands, and pegged roof timbers, indicating its importance in estate provisioning. Cartographic evidence suggests the existence of a larger building to the west of the current hall, possibly the original Sparrow Hall, now lost and obscured by scrub. This may represent a former principal dwelling, with the current hall serving as a subordinate estate farmhouse (S5).