Market Cross

BURY ST EDMUNDS

TL8564SW CORNHILL 639-1/14/294 (West side) 07/08/52 Market Cross (Formerly Listed as: CORNHILL (West side) Town Hall)

GV I

Former playhouse and town hall, now an art gallery on the upper storey with offices below. Between 1774 and 1780. By Robert Adam, architect; built by Thomas Singleton, stonemason of Bury St Edmunds, who also carved the decorative panels. White brick with Ketton stone used for dressings on the upper storey above a rusticated ground storey. EXTERIOR: 2 storeys; oblong cruciform plan; on a island site. The ground storey has semicircular headed arches on all faces and is partly open; some windows with glazing-bars. Doorways on the north and south fronts have a panel on each side carved in low relief with masks and emblems representing the Muses. The upper storey has all 4 principal faces treated in the same way with a Venetian window embraced by Ionic engaged columns supporting a frieze and pediment. On each side are plastered niches carrying Etruscan type stone ornaments. Stone panels above these niches have swags and paterae. All other faces have C19/C20 replacement small-paned sash windows set in moulded stone architraves, some with pediments on console brackets and some with cornices and ornamental friezes. All windows on the 1st storey have stone balustrading to the sills. The building is topped by a stone cornice with a stone band below. INTERIOR: has undergone considerable changes and the upper room is now rather plain: plaster cornices with palmettes; 3 central bosses in the ceiling have acanthus-leaf decoration and a fluted outer ring with swags. Doors with 4 long moulded sunk panels. A fireplace, with detached fluted columns, decorated with plaster swags and garlands, is in Adam style but made of cast-iron. An exact double of this fireplace surround is in a principal bedroom at No.2 Angel Hill, now part of the Angel Hotel (qv). (BOE: Pevsner N: Radcliffe E: Suffolk: London: 1974-: 146).

Listing NGR: TL8525364308