Farmstead record SRL 063 - Farmstead: Venn's Farm

Venn's Farm Farm, Earl Stonham. 16th century farmstead and farmhouse. Regular courtyard L-shaped plan with buildings to the third side, formed by working agricultural buildings. The farmhouse is set away from the yard. Significant loss (over 50%) of the traditional farm buildings. Located within a hamlet (S1-6).

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.

2014: Venns Farm lies in open countryside at the Mendlesham edge of Earl Stonham parish, approximately 3 km north of St Mary’s church and 200 m east of Middlewood Green. The green was enclosed at the beginning of the 19th century but is shown along with the farm on Hodskinson’s map of 1783. The grade II-listed farmhouse includes a 16th century rear range that appears to have been built as a detached bake-house or kitchen with a small open hall to the east and is of considerable historic interest. At the time of the 1838 tithe survey the farm was a modest but respectable tenanted arable holding of 53 acres owned by the eponymous Edward Beaumont Venn Esquire and occupied by George Mayhew. The farmhouse was described as ‘cottages’ occupied by Mayhew and Lawrance, indicating that it was subdivided.

The barn to the rear of the house is a well preserved late-16th century timber-framed and weatherboarded threshing barn of three bays with a central entrance to the east. The intact clasped-purlin roof preserves five of its original eight wind braces and is steeply pitched for thatch but is now covered with corrugated iron. The framing of the front elevation is intact but both gables were largely rebuilt in the late-18th or 19th century and the rear studs have been removed entirely to accommodate a rear aisle. A gabled porch of unusual length was added at much the same time but consists chiefly of 16th century timber that may have been re-used from an original predecessor. An early-19th century stable adjoining the northern gable has been stripped of its fixtures and fittings but retains a hay drop in its ceiling and a single bentwood harness hook. The barn is shown with its present outline on the 1838 map, excepting only a demolished small shed in the angle of the porch, and is of special historic significance as it illustrates an unusual 16th century farm layout in conjunction with the broadly contemporary bake-house: instead of facing a yard in front of the farmhouse it appears to have flanked a yard to the rear. Despite these points of interest the barn is unlikely to meet the strict English Heritage criteria for listing in its own right due to the extensive loss of original fabric, specifically the absence of the entire rear wall along with its threshing floor, most of the gables and the original thatch and cladding of clay render (S7).