Garden Walls, Towers and Grotto About 100 Metres South South West of the Old Rectory is a Grade II listed building in the Mid Suffolk local planning authority area, England. First listed on 25 January 1993. Garden walls, tower, grotto.
Garden Walls, Towers and Grotto About 100 Metres South South West of the Old Rectory
- WRENN ID
- south-ember-rye
- Grade
- II
- Local Planning Authority
- Mid Suffolk
- Constituency
- Central Suffolk and North Ipswich MP: Patrick Spencer (Con)
- Country
- England
- Date first listed
- 25 January 1993
- Type
- Garden walls, tower, grotto
- OS grid reference
- TM 137 497
- Coordinates
- 52.10502, 1.11967
- Source
- Historic England listing
Description
The garden walls, towers, and grotto located about 100 meters south-southwest of The Old Rectory were built around the mid-19th century for the Reverend George Drury. Constructed from flint and brick with stone dressings, the structure features plain tile pyramidal roofs on the towers. The high walls enclose an approximately rectangular garden, with a projecting section on the northeast corner and a tower on the southeast corner. There is another tower and a polygonal spur wall on the northwest corner, along with an underground grotto to the southwest that is now filled in.
The walls include buttresses and a polygonal turret on the southwest corner. The east wall has a moulded four-centre arch doorway flanked by a buttress, with ball finials on the raised parapet above. A doorway on the south side has a hoodmould, and there is a moulded pointed arch doorway in the northwest spur wall with flanking depressed two-centred arches. The towers feature long-and-short quoins; the northwest tower has a Saxon-type window and pigeon holes beneath the eaves, while the taller southeast tower includes a mullion transom window and a band of flint and stone chequerwork under the eaves, topped with a wrought iron weathervane at the apex of the roof. The inner sides of the garden walls are partly faced with random brick laid on edge, and the structure has shaped tile coping.
The underground grotto to the southwest is lined with shellwork and is believed to predate 1850. Some materials used in the construction are said to have come from the transepts and chancel of Claydon church, which were demolished in 1852. Reverend Drury, a Tractarian, is thought to have designed the garden as a Biblical allegory.
Local climate
Garden Walls, Towers and Grotto About 100 Metres South South West of the Old Rectory sits in one of the driest parts of the UK, with an average of 700 mm of rain a year. This makes it drier than 91% of listed buildings in the UK. Its exposure to wind-driven rain is lower than that of 67% of listed buildings.
It experiences an average of 24 freeze-thaw cycles a year, fewer than 74% of listed buildings. Of these, 12 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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