Farmstead record WGW 079 - Farmstead: Ivy House (Boundary Farm)

Ivy House (Boundary Farm), Worlingworth. 19th century farmstead and 16th century farmhouse. Regular courtyard U-shaped plan 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 loose farmstead cluster (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.

The barn opposite Ivy House is a red-brick and pantiled structure of the mid-19th century. It was not present at the time of the Worlingworth tithe survey in 1837 but was shown on the First Edition Ordnance Survey of 1884 and is likely to date from the 1850s or 60s. A rare manuscript map of 1606 depicts grade II-listed Ivy House as part of a small farmstead, but the site of the barn was then a field called ‘eselyscote’ on the edge of ‘Stanhaughe Grene’, approximately 1.5 km north-east of Worlingworth village. By 1837 the farm had been amalgamated with Hill Farm at the opposite end of the green, and the house was a tied cottage devoid of its own farm buildings and occupied by two agricultural labourers. Successive occupants in the late-19th and early-20th centuries were described as horsemen, and were almost certainly tasked with tending to the horses and possibly cattle in a series of enclosed yards and single-storied boarded sheds to the south of the new barn. These sheds now survive only as fragments, but the barn contains a traditional threshing area with a central entrance along with a stable and hay loft on the west. The eastern end of the building contained a similar stable or cow shed but this has also been lost. The surviving brick structure therefore retains only two of its original three elements, and has been stripped of all historic fixtures and fittings, including its doors. Despite its depleted condition the picturesque building complements the unspoilt local landscape and is of some historic interest as a late example of a traditional threshing barn designed as part of a sophisticated High Victorian yard complex (S7).