The Old Rectory including courtyard outbuildings

COMBS

1226/0/1009 PARK ROAD The Old Rectory including courtyard outbuildings

II

House, formerly rectory. 1836-8, with earlier origins and later alterations. By E. Rednall, builder of Stowmarket, for Rev.Richard Daniel. Gault brick with hipped slate roofs and with gault and red brick end and ridge stacks. Simplified Late Classical style. 2 storeys in part with attic. Front facing entrance drive is a 4-window range of 6/6 sashes over 6/9 sashes allun horned and with stucco lintels. Entrance front to right has the end of this range to left with 2 6/6 sashes over 2 8/8 sashes and then a projecting frontispiece, 5 windows wide, with panelled and moulded sections of brickwork and a door case with brickwork surround at either end. The pediment over this section is late C20. Windows are 6/6 sashes except for central 1st floor sash which is 8/8. The left side behind the drive front has a door and further windows including sashes. To the right of the entrance front projects a further small wing and a small courtyard of single-storey outbuildings. INTERIOR features include an open-well staircase with stick balustrade and with mahogany hand-rail with scrolled end and also 6-panel doors. Interior also reported as retaining timber-framing surviving from an earlier house on the site. HISTORY. There are drawings and correspondence in the Suffolk Record Office showing the drive front elevation inscribed 'Elevation Combs Rectory' and signed 'E. Rednall, Builder, Stowmarket.' The design is the same as that built except that the ground floor windows as built are 6/9 sashes rather than the 6/6 shown in the drawing. There is also a plan of the house showing an open-well staircase similar to that existing. The plan also shows a porch in the position of the existing front door but the present entrance front frontespiece projects forward and may be later fronting an earlier building retained when the Rednall rebuilding took place. Ephraim Rednall was a builder and surveyor in Stowmarket and the son of Richard Rednall, a carpenter of Finningham. In 1837 he built the Vicarage at Stowmarket in conjunction with Daniel Revett, also a builder in the same place. The correspondence with the plans shows that the work at Combs cost £1266-16s-5d.

SOURCES.Brown, Haward and Kindred, Dictionary of Architects of Suffolk Buildings 1800-1914, 1991, p.163, citing:SROI HA1/HB6/2/23 (plan and elevation dated 27/05/1836).