Grundisburgh Hall

Grundisburgh Hall is a house of early 17th-century date with extensive twentieth-century additions and alterations, located on the east side of Ipswich Road.

The building is timber-framed with rendered and colourwashed infill, and Flemish bond brick with a plain tile roof. It comprises two storeys and an attic.

The entrance front is symmetrically composed of three bays. The central feature consists of a plank door with moulded muntins, flanked at the top by 3-light casements which join with a 3-light overlight. To either side at ground floor level are mullioned windows of 5 lights with ovolo-moulded mullions and a transom. The first floor has two similar lateral mullioned windows and a central 4-light window of the same design. Metal rainwater pipes with decorated rectangular heads sit between the bays. An ovolo-moulded string course divides the first floor from the projecting gabled dormers above. The attic contains two lateral gables with 3-light casements and a central stilted gable with a 3-light ovolo-moulded mullioned window.

Early nineteenth-century prints indicate that the front originally featured canted bay windows to the lateral bays which reduced in size above first floor level to smaller attic canted bays with decoratively hipped roofs, probably of lead. The facade received a classical treatment in the early nineteenth century with Diocletian windows to the gables, and was given its present appearance in the 1960s.

The right-hand flank presents an exposed basement level due to the fall of land. A massive chimney stack, slightly left of centre, is built in English bond brick and splays out via kneelers before dying back via crow-steps and terminating in three octagonal shafts with moulded bases and faceted caps. The basement level is also of English bond brick, with colourwashed walling to the ground and first floors. A twentieth-century mullioned and transomed window of 4 lights appears at ground floor level to the right, and single-light windows flank the chimney stack at first floor level. A large twentieth-century addition is recessed and positioned to the right, comprising basement, ground and first floors with a flat roof. The left side of this addition has a slightly projecting plinth with a plank door at the left with muntins. Two cross windows with ovolo-moulded surrounds and brick hoodmoulds with label stops appear at first floor level. Kneelers support the shaped gable which has a concave lower body and convex top with three octagonal chimney shafts featuring moulded bases and interlocked caps.

The rear elevation shows the twentieth-century wing projecting to the right. To the left of this, recessed, is the seventeenth-century range which has twentieth-century fenestration except in the staircase turret at the right. This turret contains two 2-light casements at mezzanine level between the ground and first floors, a 5-light ovolo-moulded mullioned window with transom at ground floor, and a similar window at the mezzanine level between first floor and attics. A large hall window to the left consists of two windows of 3 by 3 lights divided by a king mullion. Above this at first floor are two similar windows of 3 by 2 lights divided by a king mullion, and a 3-light casement appears in the gable.

Interior features include a library with late sixteenth-century panelling brought from the demolished portion of the house. This panelling has debased Ionic capitals with cabled fluting and square panels to the overmantel with egg-and-dart surrounds. The ceiling has chamfered beams with stepped run-out stops and a Tudor arch to the hearth with chamfered voussoirs. The hall contains chamfered wall posts which originally had decorative jowels, now somewhat cut back. The ceiling beams have ovolo-moulded edges with hollow channels to the centres, arranged in a cross pattern with the axial beam halved over the cross-axial beam. Decorative plaster motifs appear in the ceiling, with central rosettes and fleurs de lys to the corners of each panel, brought from the demolished portion. A staircase of four flights features turned balusters and newels with a heavy moulded handrail with ball finials and similar dado rails. One room on the first floor has a similar cross-pattern ceiling with beams featuring hollow centres. The attic landing contains a late seventeenth-century mural painting displaying seventy coats of arms of East Anglian families. The roof structure comprises principals, collars and arched wind braces.

The seventeenth-century portion originally formed one range of an extensive building of sixteenth and seventeenth-century dates which extended south of the present house and was demolished in the 1960s.