Farmstead record WKS 033 - Farmstead: Street Farm DC/20/5083/FUL

Street Farm, Wickham Skeith. 16th century farmstead and 15th century farmhouse. Loose courtyard four-sided plan formed by working agricultural buildings. The farmhouse is set away from the yard. Partial loss (less than 50^) of the traditional farm buildings. Located within a village (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.

Street Farm is among the most picturesque and historically interesting sites in Suffolk. It adjoins open countryside to the south of The Street in Wickham Skeith and contains a grade II*-listed 15th century farmhouse with a separately listed early-17th century barn on the east. The barn is a timber-framed and weatherboarded structure in 7 bays that was originally thatched and rendered externally. It represents an unusually complete example of a distinctively East Anglian multi-purpose farm building with evidence of an original stable of 2 bays towards the road on the north and a 5-bay threshing barn to the south. Both the stable and threshing barn were entered from the narrow yard adjoining the house on the west and the former was lit by a diamond-mullion window in its back wall. The horses would have been stalled against the gable and the hay loft above was accessible from within the barn. Although evidence for integral stables is not uncommon in local barns it is rarely sufficient to allow a complete reconstruction in this way. The internal partition was removed along with the loft when a larger stable was built to the rear at the beginning of the 19th century, and a new gabled rear porch of two bays was added at much the same time – replacing a smaller predecessor that may have been roofed as a lean-to. The original clasped and butt-purlin roof structure is exceptionally intact with a full complement of wind-braces and the building preserves other features of historic interest including original panels of wattle-and-daub, carpenters’ Roman numerals drawn in red ochre and an unusually large number of apotropaic hexafoils intended to protect the crop from unseen harm. The house was significantly enlarged at much the same time, reflecting the agricultural boom of the early-17th century and perhaps the aggrandizement of the site after a marriage in the 1620s between the yeoman Goddard family at Street Farm and their wealthier neighbours the Freres at Abbey Farm. There is evidence to suggest the expense of construction bankrupted its owner as the property was mortgaged and forfeited to the Freres soon afterwards. At the time of the parish tithe survey in 1838 it was a substantial tenanted holding of 213.5 acres owned by the Right Honourable John Hookham Frere who served as the British ambassador to Spain during the Napoleonic wars. The high price of grain during this conflict may well have occasioned and funded the enlarged stable and porch. An abnormal projection from the front of the medieval farmhouse preserves a Pre-Reformation wall painting and appears to have operated as a rare private shrine or oratory. It was probably built primarily as part of a jettied gatehouse range against the street, linking the service bay to the barn’s predecessor, and offers important insight into the nature of late-medieval courtyard farmsteads in Suffolk