St Denys, Bury St. Edmunds, West Suffolk, Suffolk, IP33 (Grade II*)

BURY ST EDMUNDS

TL8563NE HONEY HILL 639-1/11/444 (South side) 07/08/52 No.6 St Denys

GV II*

House. C18 front; C15 core. Timber-framed; C18 ashlar to the Honey Hill frontage; rear range faced in red brick and stone; slate roof. EXTERIOR: 2 storeys and attics to front range, 2 storeys to the long rear wing. The ashlar front, with a stone parapet, cornice and plinth with splayed top, was added during the ownership of Thomas Singleton, the stone mason responsible for building the Town Hall, Cornhill (qv). Rusticated quoins. 3 window range: the 2 outer windows on each storey are tripartite, with 12-pane central lights. The centre breaks forward, with plain pilasters to the 1st storey enclosing a 12-pane sash window above the entrance. A raised stone band runs below the windows on each storey. A recessed 6-panel door with raised fielded panels is in a wide entrance porch with paired pilasters banded with vermiculated rustications, a frieze ornamented with paterae and a cornice. The rear wing is faced with late C17 red brick on the west side with a plain cornice. 3-light casement windows with segmental-arched heads have square-leaded panes. INTERIOR: the C15 front range had a 2-cell plan with a jettied service-room to the left of a central cross-entry, now underbuilt, and a one-and-a-half bay open hall, now fragmentary, to the right. The original building, with its continuous roofline, may well have been of Wealden form, though conclusive evidence is lacking. The partition at the lower end of the former open hall is now concealed above the present cross-entry, realigned in the C18. It has a richly moulded and embattled spere beam, with evidence for braced spere posts, and supports close-studding up to the ridge of the roof. The mouldings continue along the middle rail on the rear wall as far as the open truss, which is of arched-braced collar form, but fragmentary. In the rear wall, the main post of the truss has a polygonal buttress shaft with a moulded capital at the springing of a steep arched brace. The collar-purlin is clasped between an upper and lower collars. The timbers are not smoke-blackened, but have traces of late C16/early C17 colouring in red and white. Slight remains of an early C16 inserted floor over the hall

with moulded joists and a truncated main beam. This range of the house had major alterations by Thomas Singleton (d.1792) in the later C18: most of the earlier evidence was exposed during recent restoration work and is no longer visible. An early C18 dog-leg stair with turned balusters links the front and rear ranges of the house. The rear range is in 4 bays, 2 originally storied and 2 containing an open hall whose initial function may have been industrial rather than domestic. The roof is smoke-blackened with a tall plain rough crown-post braced to the collar-purlin with small solid braces. Widely-spaced studding in the gable. The 2 storeyed bays have massive plain joists and an unblackened roof of crown-post type. On the 1st storey there was formerly a partition between these 2 bay