Little West Farm

Little West Farm, Melford Road, Lawshall

Little West Farm is a house of late 16th-century date, specifically 1592, with 17th-century alterations and 20th-century extensions. The building is constructed of colourwashed timber-frame with a thatched roof and a brick right ridge stack. The 20th-century rear extension has a pantile roof.

The house follows a three-unit lobby-entry plan and is single storey with an attic. The front elevation displays two three-light casements and a central door set within a gabled open porch, with a two-light casement to the right. A small window sits in the upper left, and a two-light gabled dormer is positioned in the centre. The right end has a narrow wide multi-light window with a two-light casement above, with a lean-to extension on the rear extending from the late 20th-century rear extension. The left end features a two-light casement on each floor, with a further lean-to extension to the rear.

The interior retains tall-panel framing mostly visible throughout. The bridging beams are chamfered with simple curving stops, and wide ceiling joists are present. The carved date of 1592 appears on the hall bridging beam, likely marking the house's initial construction or occupation and providing an unusually precise date. The roof is a clasped purlin roof with long coupled rafters, visible in one half to the apex. It was originally hipped at both ends but now has gables.

The outstanding feature of the house is the rare, original and fully intact single-flue timber-framed chimneystack with its original brick hearth. This is reliably reported as one of the best preserved examples of its type in Suffolk. The timber structure ends in a platform two feet beneath the ridge and supports a brick shaft to resist the elements. Although the bressumer is tenoned to the rear wall, the flue dimension confirms the fireplace did not extend to the rear wall, and the lack of peg holes confirms that brickwork formed the hearth. The fireplace heats a central floored hall with an unheated service bay to the left, subdivided into two rooms entered by doors against the rear and front walls, leaving a space for a bench opposite the hearth. The bay to the right of the chimney was remodelled in the 17th century when the parlour bay was rebuilt and extended. A brick chimney was added to the rear of the timber-framed chimneystack in this new parlour bay. This bay has a wide window with diamond mullions, and others of this type appear elsewhere in the house, some blocked, along with several old plank doors.

The rear wall framing of the original house is visible in the high entrance hall, forming the beginning of the 20th-century extension. The roof junction has preserved the original roof intact.

Little West Farm is significant as a late 16th-century house with dated fabric, which is unusual. Its principal importance rests on the survival of the very rare late 16th-century timber-framed smokehood or chimneystack with its original brick base and bressumer. The evolution of domestic comfort is further illustrated by the survival of the 17th-century brick stack constructed to its rear.