The Reading Room is a Grade II listed building in the Mid Suffolk local planning authority area, England. First listed on 9 May 1988. House. 1 related planning application.
The Reading Room
- WRENN ID
- empty-vestry-juniper
- Grade
- II
- Local Planning Authority
- Mid Suffolk
- Constituency
- Bury St Edmunds and Stowmarket MP: Dr Peter Prinsley (Lab)
- Country
- England
- Date first listed
- 9 May 1988
- Type
- House
- Address
- The Reading Room, the Street, Stowlangtoft, IP31 3JX
- OS grid reference
- TL 960 682
- Coordinates
- 52.27743, 0.87183
- Source
- Historic England listing
Description
The Reading Room is a house built around 1830, originally serving as a Reading Room. It features flushed flint rubble with quoins and dressings made of gault brick. The main section has a plaintiled roof, while flat roofs on either side are set behind embattled parapets. Notable architectural details include a pair of prominent bargeboards with ogee-curved pierced soffits, each adorned with a Tudor flower at the cusp and a turned drop finial at the apex. A gault brick chimney with three octagonal flues is present. The building has a two-storey gable-front center section flanked by large single-storey splayed bays on either side. Each bay contains a large three-light window with arches above each light, featuring deeply-chamfered reveals and a moulded square hoodmould. The smaller windows in the bays have similar designs but feature 4-centred heads without hoodmoulds and are fitted with leaded lights. The right-hand bay includes an entrance door with six equal sunk panels, which has arcading within the head.
Local climate
The Reading Room sits in a drier-than-average part of the UK, with an average of 710 mm of rain a year. This makes it drier than 88% of listed buildings in the UK. Its exposure to wind-driven rain is lower than that of 95% of listed buildings.
It experiences an average of 33 freeze-thaw cycles a year, fewer than 54% of listed buildings. Of these, 17 follow at least 1 mm of rain in the preceding 48 hours. Average temperatures at this location have risen by 0.3°C per decade since 1991.
Averages for 1991–2020; temperature trend 1991–2025. Figures describe the wider area (a grid cell of roughly 10 km), not the individual site. Contains modified Copernicus Climate Change Service information 2026.
More on this building
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- Full EPC report — heating system, energy costs, size, glazing, construction etc.
- Sale history — 5 transactions since 1998
- Related listed building consents — 1 application
- Detailed attributes — period, style, materials, features
- Flood risk assessment
- Radon risk assessment
- Weather exposure and heating demand — rain and frost month by month and year by year, wind direction, solar and humidity
Matched applications, energy data and sale records are assembled automatically and may contain errors. Flag incorrect data.
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