Infirmary hall to the north of St John's Farmhouse (formerly Barn to the north of St John's Farmhouse)

Infirmary hall to the north of St John's Farmhouse

A two-storey service building representing three bays of the infirmary hall to the Hospital of Mary Magdelene, first recorded in 1225. In 1251 it merged with the Hospital of St John the Baptist to become the Hospital of St John the Baptist and St Mary Magdelene. The building currently forms part of St Johns Farm, Ely.

The building is constructed largely of rubble and Barnack stone with a tiled roof and is rectangular in plan. It was substantially built or rebuilt in the 16th century, with phases of alteration assigned to the 13th, 15th, 16th, 18th and 20th centuries.

The three-bay, two-storey exterior has crow-stepped gables on the east and west elevations. The north elevation contains a blocked 13th-century arcade, buttressed between the arches and at the west end. The stonework used to construct the buttresses and infill the arches contains no evidently recycled material seen in the other elevations, suggesting the alterations for domestic use may have been undertaken in two phases, with the arcade blocking possibly dating before the Dissolution. Conversion to two storeys created two-light mullioned windows inserted into both ground and first-floor levels of each blocked bay, with upper windows set directly beneath the arch apexes. The ground-floor window to the east is exceptional, with a wider and deeper opening, a relieving arch over, three internal mullions, its lower part bricked up, and timber louvres rather than glazed casements.

The reconstruction of the other three walls may be contemporary with the addition of a hall to the south and a second domestic range to the east. A 16th-century timber-framed door with a four-centred arch stands towards the east end of the ground-floor in the south wall, in the same position as a porch door, above which is set a stone piscina. A first-floor opening blocked with brick at the south end of the east elevation may have given access to the long gallery described in early plans. The east gable contains fragments of arcade piers, either recycled from further bays of the north arcade or from a south aisle arcade.

The ground-floor originally contained two rooms divided by a timber stud partition covered in wattle and daub. Both have an axial beam, chamfered and stopped at both ends, running east and west from a ceiling beam above the partition wall. The east room has a short beam with mortices for joists extending north from the axial beam, with a matching mortice suggesting a southern beam. A fireplace at the east end, altered for late 19th or early 20th-century domestic use, is a brick structure containing a large copper for washing clothes. Glazed floor tiles beneath the sill of the door connecting the two rooms may represent the original infirmary hall floor. This door has a timber frame with a four-centred arch. Part of the east room is partitioned off as a coal store. The east wall contains a fireplace with a timber bressumer with an arched upper profile; the chevron-patterned brickwork to its back is unfired, compatible with the room's former use as a dairy, though the fireplace form suggests it was originally intended for polite domestic use.

The first-floor, reached by a staircase in the east room, is now a single open space, formerly two rooms. It has a principal-rafter roof without a ridge piece, with collars and staggered purlins. Substantial roof repairs were undertaken in the 1980s. Fallen plasterwork in the north wall reveals two arches of the 13th-century arcade at the point where their shafts spring from head corbels. To the east is a brick-backed fireplace with a substantial chamfered bressumer with an arched upper profile similar to the ground-floor west fireplace. To the south is a timber-framed doorway with four-centred arch opening onto a brick-backed alcove, visible as a blocked opening in the east elevation. To the north is a window with three arched lights, the two outer lights infilled with brick. The east end contains a large centrally placed opening with moulded surround, formerly a window now blocked, to the south of which is an inserted opening containing double timber doors, thought to occupy the position of the former fireplace.