Home Farm

Home Farm and The Homestead are a complex range of agricultural buildings and farm house which have been adapted and extended over time as the requirements of farming have changed. A “Hall Farm” is recorded close to this site in the 1805 original of the Ordnance Survey map. 

It seems likely that this is the site for the current buildings known as Home Farm and the Homestead. The buildings that we see today are probably of more recent times. It is likely that the farm was acquired from the Last family at the expiration of their lease, sometime after Charles Berners had bought Tower Farm, Freston in 1795. The land was subsequently developed by Rev. H D Berners. It may be that the building in the photograph below, at an angle compared to the regular layout of the remainder, is part of the original farm. More buildings were added between 1886 and 1904.

Home Farm consisted of a range of agricultural buildings. Most were brick built with tile or slate roofs. In 1937, they covered a range of agricultural requirements. Among these were buildings for work on the farm, breeding and transport. There were loose boxes, a coach-house, horse boxes and a stallion box. Among other buildings there was a range of piggeries, a bullock shed, a meal house, a slaughterhouse, a 16 bay cart lodge, and a lambing shed and yard. Water was provided from a two-storey Water Tower seen at the front and east of the property.

The Homestead was built c. 1836 at the direction of Rev. Henry Denny Berners. This attractive building is actually in the parish of Freston with the parish boundary running between The Homestead and through Home Farm itself. It is likely that the architect was Robert Abraham (1774 – 1850) who was employed by Rev. Berners on the family estate in London and Suffolk. It has been altered in later years. The house is set back from the Main Road with a double entrance gravelled drive with iron palisading to the front. It is constructed of red brick in the Flemish bond under a slate roof. The central porch has polygonal angle buttresses, Tudor-arched entrance and side lights under hood-moulds. There were “Eight principal bedrooms and dressing rooms”. The four bedrooms for servants were approached by a separate staircase. On the ground floor there were: lounge hall, dining room, morning room, drawing room, gentleman’s cloakroom, heated conservatory and a library. Plus, kitchen, scullery and servants hall for all the domestic offices. The grounds included pleasure gardens, an orchard and a kitchen garden.

For a period from c.1891 – 1927, the building was recorded as “Woolverstone House” which coincided with the time that the Hon. Louis Vanden-Rempe-Johnstone was Land Agent for his brother-in-law, Charles Hugh Berners of Woolverstone Hall. His wife, Gwendoline Mary Elizabeth, was granddaughter of Captain Hugh Berners RN and niece to Charles Hugh. For many years she lived at “Woolverstone House” but not the Woolverstone House we know, which wasn’t built until 1902. The Hon Mr Johnstone died in 1922. When his widow, the Hon. Mrs Johnstone, moved to the old St Peter’s Home, she took the name with her and St Peter’s Home became Woolverstone House.

You can find more information here: https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1203960?section=official-list-entry