Heritage Statement for a new farm building beside a Grade II listed farmhouse.

A modern farm building twenty metres from a listed house.

The farm needed a new storage building, a steel portal frame clad in black weatherboarding, about 16m by 9m. The chosen site was behind the farmhouse and about 20m from it.

Farm buildings of this kind are normally dealt with by prior notification, a quick procedure in which the council can consider only the siting, design and external appearance of the building. Siting was exactly the sensitive point here. A new building so close to a listed house is within its setting, and under s.66(1) of the Planning (Listed Buildings and Conservation Areas) Act 1990 the council must have special regard to the desirability of preserving that setting. The farm’s agent recommended that a Heritage Statement go in with the notification.

What used to stand there.

The assessment was desk-based, following Historic England’s staged approach to the setting of heritage assets. The farm supplied photographs taken to a plan of viewpoints that we drew up, covering long views and close ones.

The evidence that mattered was historical. The tithe map of 1842, Ordnance Survey maps published in 1883, 1904 and 1950 and an aerial photograph of the 1960s showed that the farmhouse once had a full yard of traditional farm buildings behind it, on the ground where the new building was proposed. Most had gone. A farm building in that position was therefore a return to the arrangement the house was built to serve, and no departure from it.

The Heritage Statement.

Our Heritage Statement of December 2025 described the farmhouse and its significance, set out the map and photographic evidence for the lost farmyard, and assessed the proposal. It found that the working farmland and farm buildings are part of what gives the farmhouse its meaning, that the new building would not be seen with the house from the public road, and that the setting and significance of the listed building would be preserved.

Endorsed by the council’s heritage officer.

East Suffolk’s Principal Design and Heritage Officer had no cause for concern. He described the Heritage Statement as being “to a good standard”, relied on its evidence that the farmhouse had historically had a farmstead of several buildings behind it, and concluded that there would be no harm to the significance of the listed building.

The council then asked for further details on ecology and archaeology, and granted prior approval in April 2026. The same evidence did a second job at that stage. The council’s archaeological adviser noted that the earlier buildings shown in the aerial photograph and the Heritage Statement would already have disturbed the ground, and asked for no archaeological investigation.