47 And 48, Abbeygate Street

This building, located on Abbeygate Street in Bury St Edmunds, is a shop premises that originally comprised two shops and houses. The prominent front facade dates from the early 19th century, while a core of the structure dates back to around 1300. Each half of the property has a long timber-framed rear range. The front is timber-framed and rendered with a slate roof, while the rear has a 20th-century tile roof.

The architectural style features a paired bracketed eaves cornice. The front has a four-window range with small-paned sash windows, wooden architraves, cornices, and enriched console brackets. Later 20th-century shop fronts have been installed.

Interior features are fragmentary; remnants of late 13th/early 14th-century elements were revealed during restoration work in 1988 but have since been removed or concealed again. A substantial timber-framed east boundary wall, shared with number 46, remains largely complete with passing braces and scissor braces. The original structure of number 47 featured a jettied street frontage, containing a shop and a wide passage leading to a rear hall. The jetty structure and bressumer survive. The rear range incorporates a 15th-century core and retains a coupled rafter roof.

The front was raised in the early 19th century, and a remodelled first-storey room features a small ornate plaster cornice with bead and reel decoration. The west party wall to the front range of number 48 is of medieval flint rubble. The long rear range is composed of several sections, including portions from the 16th and 17th centuries, with the northernmost section retaining the remains of a plain crown-post roof and the upper framing of an end wall. To the south of this wall, an early 17th-century range features Jacobean panelling, including reset panels with guilloche or lozenge designs. A wide early 19th-century bow window with three small-paned sashes and a reeded pilaster sits in the ground-story rear, overlooking the former garden, above a panelled dado.

A 16th-century timber-framed outbuilding, once detached but now linked to number 47 by a 20th-century extension, has two bays and a chimney stack on its south side. The ground-story ceiling has heavy flat joists, and a timber lintel is visible above the fireplace. The roof appears to have been renewed in the 18th century. It is believed this building served as a kitchen or brewhouse. Historically, the building is thought to have been part of the estate of John of Nottingham (died 1437).