Church Of St Peter

The Church of St Peter is a district church located on Hospital Road in Bury St Edmunds. It was built in 1858 by architect JH Hakewill and features a design in the High Victorian Early English style. The church is constructed with polychromatic bands of flint and freestone dressings. The nave and chancel are combined into a single cell under one roof, with a vestry on the north side and a south-west tower that also serves as a porch.

The exterior showcases a mix of black knapped flint and random flint above a plinth of black knapped flint. The walls are further enhanced by stone-faced angle buttresses at the east and west ends. The roofs are covered with plain tiles from the 20th century. Windows include single, two, and three-light designs with plate tracery, featuring pointed heads outlined with alternating blocks of stone and black knapped flint. The three-light east window has additional cusped plate tracery, with the wall below displaying alternating bands of black knapped flint and stone. The tower is topped by a small shingled broach spire, with lancets on the south face and two-light windows with plate tracery on each face of the top stage, the lights filled with stone and pierced by vertical rows of quatrefoils. The south and west doorways are pointed and feature continuous rectangular hood-moulds and multiple moulding.

Inside, the church is wide and plain, retaining its original fittings, including plain benches, a stone font with Early English decoration, a stone pulpit with an attached lectern and reading desk, and a panelled stone reredos behind the altar. The nave roof has plain boarding, while the chancel roof is boarded, panelled, and coloured. A wooden chancel arch is supported by angel brackets with colonnettes. The east window, designed in the Kempe style, dates from 1909. The church is noted for its example of High Victorian Evangelical single-cell church planning, contrasting with the more complex, subdivided plans of contemporary Tractarian churches.