93 And 95, Risbygate Street

House, previously divided into 3, then 2; now a shop and offices in Bury St Edmunds. The building dates from the 14th and 16th centuries internally, with an early 19th-century front elevation.

The structure is timber-framed and jettied, except for a single unjettied bay at the east end. The upper storey is rendered and the ground storey is faced with white brick. The roof is covered in plain tiles. An internal chimney-stack has a square shaft rising from a rectangular red brick base. A rear wing extends from the west end.

The exterior shows 2 storeys and a cellar. The upper storey has 6 windows: 16-pane sashes in flush cased frames. The ground storey contains 5 irregularly spaced windows: 16-pane sashes in plain reveals with flat cement arches featuring vermiculated keystones and stub brackets. Two doors have similar flat arches, plain wood surrounds and rectangular fanlights. At No. 95, an original doorway survives with a flower carved in each spandrel of the doorhead, now incorporated within the later door case. A 2-storey gabled rear wing stands on the north west, and a rear range parallel to the front displays a row of 3 gables.

Internally, the building comprises two originally separate structures merged by the late 16th century. On the west, a 2-bay early 16th-century front range was attached to and partly replaced a mid-14th-century house set at right angles to the street. Two storeys of this medieval house survive at the rear, though fire damage in the 1980s has obscured or destroyed many original features, including a pointed-arch doorway leading from the rear yard and original flint walling on the ground storey, used for its fire-resistant properties in what appeared to be a kitchen. The ground storey ceiling has heavy closely-set unchamfered joists, and diamond mullioned windows remain to each storey. An open hall belonging to this medieval end was replaced in the 16th century by the ground storey of the northern bay of the front, which features tension bracing in the gable-end wall, double ogee-moulding to main beams and joists, and a 18th or early 19th-century end stack constructed of reused Tudor brick. A cross-entry and shop occupied the adjoining front bay. On the first storey, the room above the hall remains fully partitioned from the neighbouring upper room, suggesting an irregular initial division of this section into two separate units. The eastern part was originally a separate early 16th-century house, similarly well framed, of which 2 bays and the remains of a cross-entry survive. Initially it was divided into 2 one-bay rooms on each storey, each heated by chimney-stacks on the rear wall. By the late 16th century, when the two houses were combined, an internal chimney-stack with two back-to-back hearths was inserted into the western bay, featuring plain timber lintels and jambs and sides incorporating a liberal admixture of reused stone blocks. Along the front wall, very deep sills of large oriel windows survive, with evidence for further oriels on the upper storey and remains of secondary windows with ovolo-moulded mullions. At the same time, a gallery containing a stair was added against the rear wall; this has since been incorporated into the front range.