Baret House

BARET HOUSE

A major late medieval town house on the west side of Chequer Square, with fragmentary 12th-century origins, a significant 14th-century stone cellar, and substantial rebuilding in the mid-15th century and later periods.

The house was built as a lodging range before 1463 for John Baret (died 1467), an outstanding figure in Bury St Edmunds who was granted "SS" status by Henry VI. His will of 1463 provides exceptional detail of the complex design of the house. The hall range and other alterations date to around 1500, likely commissioned by William Baret (died 1506), John's nephew and heir. Further remodelling occurred in the late 17th century and around 1813, when William Steggles, a builder, leased the house and agreed to spend £300 on repairs within two years, rebuilding the front wall, inserting attics and sash windows, panelled doors, and making major internal alterations.

The building is constructed of timber-framing with a white brick front wall, stone cellar, and red brick to the garden front. The roof is slate with ridge and end stacks.

The plan comprises a ground-floor hall to the left, a cross passage to the centre, and a two-cell lodging range to the right. A rear gallery wing and rear stair turret complete the configuration.

The exterior presents three storeys and a cellar. The front elevation is a five-window range arranged 1:3:1, with the centre breaking forward slightly. Windows are 12-pane sashes with gauged heads and stone sills. A raised stucco band marks the first-storey sill level. The central entrance is a six-panelled door in a segmental-arched recess with fluted columns and a fanlight with Gothick glazing-bars. The south-facing garden front is faced in late 17th-century red brick in an irregular bond and shows evidence of roof-raising around 1813. Two 12-pane sash windows light the ground storey in flush cased frames; two late 17th-century cross windows with square leaded panes occupy the first storey. A two-storey 15th-century timber-framed rear gallery range, set at right-angles and faced in late 17th-century red brick with old plain tiles, contains two first-storey cross windows with early crown glass bearing inscriptions and original wrought-iron fittings, and a small-paned sash window on the ground storey.

The ground-floor hall spans three bays with a lower undershot but integral cross-passage bay. Its rear wall is of 14th-century flint rubble, incorporating a small blocked early 14th-century freestone doorway with pointed arch set in a deep segmental-arched recess. The remainder is timber-framed. Complex roll-and-hollow mouldings ornament the beams and roll-moulded joists in the hall ceiling. The lower part of the jettied exterior front wall, now concealed behind the brick façade, retains moulded shafts and brackets with polygonal capitals, a moulded rail at window sill level, and moulded mullions to continuous windows. A moulded spere beam marks the cross-passage; the blocked front door shows moulded jambs and evidence for a pointed arched head. The rear part of the passage is divided off, apparently for a staircase, with unchamfered heavy joists. Two chambers above the hall feature tension-braced close studding and doorways with four-centred heads and two orders of hollow chamfering. Tiebeams show evidence for archbraces and crownposts visible in the attic floors. The medieval cellar beneath the hall is constructed of flint and limestone rubble with a brick and limestone doorway in the front wall. Fragmentary medieval features date from the 12th century onwards, with major alterations probably in the 17th century. The historical notes that until the late Middle Ages, Chequer Square was at least two metres lower than at present, indicating this was an undercroft near to ground level. The rear rafter-slope remains medieval, though the front roof-slope was rebuilt around 1813 to a lower pitch.

The north range to the right, built before 1463, comprises four bays originally serving as lodgings for priests: the ground floor housed the St Mary priest of St James's Church and the first floor the St Mary priest of St Mary's Church. The range features plain chamfered main beams and unchamfered first-floor joists. Tension-braced close studding is evident throughout. A narrow first-floor doorway with a steep four-centred head, once leading to a garderobe, provides evidence for a two-storey gallery along the rear wall. The front wall shows evidence of being jettied. A chimneystack inserted at the centre of the lodging range around 1500–1530 contains three fireplaces with evidence for a fourth, all with moulded arched brick openings. The two northern fireplaces have plastered recessed panels featuring a fine moulded-brick arcade of five trefoil-cusped arches each, decorated with ruddle and white pencilling. The upper fireplace panel displays a grotesque scheme dating around 1600 consisting of "a strapwork cartouche surrounded by elaborate intertwining foliage, interspersed putti and fantastic birds". The ground-floor fireplace panel contains "black letter text with perhaps a pictorial or a decorative design below the text", mostly concealed by later whitewash. The narrower southern first-floor fireplace features a similar tall recessed panel with an arcade of two cusped arches, decorated with ruddle and pencilling, refreshed in at least two phases. Multiple phases of painted decoration are traced on the walls of both northern lodging rooms, with the earliest probably pre-Reformation. The ground-floor gallery wall retains "a substantial section of very good quality arabesque decoration...(Traces of earlier scheme beneath):.... plain red or patterned; a green and a pink colour can also be glimpsed through losses in the black and white scheme".

The rear gallery range, dating to the 15th century or around 1500, faces the garden and spans three and a half bays, truncated at the rear. Close studding is evident, with a first-floor window featuring complex mullions and evidence of arched-headed lights. The roof trusses display unjowled and unbraced posts, square crownposts with thick four-centred archbraces rising to the collar purlin. Truss four from the east was closed; truss two became closed in the 15th or 16th century. A stair wing added to the rear in the late 17th or 18th century contains an early 19th-century staircase with wrought-ironwork balustrade, introduced from Hardwick House, Bury St Edmunds in the early 20th century.

The house's significance lies in its status as a major late medieval town house with substantial survivals of high-quality timber-framing, including a 14th-century doorway, the mid-15th-century priests' lodging range, and a fine hall ceiling of around 1500 with moulded beams and joists. The chimneystack retains very significant painted decoration dating both to the pre-Reformation period and later, with fine moulded brick panels above the fireplaces. John Baret is buried in his chantry chapel at St Mary's Church nearby. The Golding family, local gentry, owned the house during the 16th and 17th centuries, and may have commissioned some of the painted decoration. Warren's map of 1747 indicates that the rear gallery range was formerly at least two bays longer, extending to the boundary wall with Bridewell Lane.