Wetherden Hall

Wetherden Hall is a house, originally a manor house, dating to the late 15th century, with substantial remodelling in the early 19th century and 20th-century alterations. An earlier range was likely built for Sir John Sulyard (d.1487), Chief Justice to Richard III. The building is constructed of brick, partially rendered and whitewashed, with a timber-frame to the rear range. It has a hipped slate roof with a brick ridge and side stacks. The plan is of a double-depth central staircase plan, with a wing to the rear right.

The front range is from the early 19th century, and the rear range incorporates two truncated and altered 15th-century ranges. The front elevation is symmetrical with three bays, featuring a three-window range at the first floor with 20th-century windows. A central porch, supported by Doric columns and containing a glazed door, leads into the house. Steel French windows are located on either side of the porch, with matching windows and French windows to the right side, and a garage to the left. The rear has mainly 2- and 3-light casement windows, also largely 20th-century, along with a projecting stack in the re-entrant angle.

Inside, the hall has an early 19th-century staircase with a stick balustrade, and rooms above with detailing characteristic of that period. The rear range is L-shaped, consisting of a one-and-a-half-bay left arm and a three-bay right arm (now a kitchen and sitting room). The ground floor of the left arm features triangular-profiled roll-and-scotia moulded common joists and a damaged moulded bridging beam. The right arm has massive crossed bridging beams, some boxed and plastered, with broad chamfers and step-stopped details. On the first floor of the left arm are jowled wall posts, with double-ogee moulding on one face of a closed truss. A pair of wall posts is found in the right arm; one is double-ogee moulded with a mason-mitred stop resembling a moulded doorway, while the other is chamfered in two orders. At roof level there is close studding with wattle and daub infill in some areas, along with bridging beams and wall plates. One section displays edge-halved and bridled scarf joints. There are significant reused components used in the 19th-century ceiling and roof construction, including studs with gouging for original exposed brick nogging, moulded muntins from a cross-passage-type screen, moulded joists/rafters (some with provision for applied bosses or motifs), and hollow-chamfered joists, some indicating jetty evidence.

Historically, the moated site was the home of the Sulyard family in the 15th and 16th centuries. Sir John and his widow financed the nave and aisle roofs of St. Mary's Church in Wetherden. The former causeway across the moat suggests the remaining fragment of the house was likely part of the gatehouse range at or near the east end of a courtyard house approximately 50 metres long, with the hall range originally located to the west of the present house.