West Stow Hall

West Stow Hall is a house with gatehouse, dating from the early 16th century and later. It stands on Icklingham Road in West Stow.

The gatehouse, built around 1520 by Sir John Crofts (Master of the Horse to Mary Tudor, sister of Henry VIII), is the most striking feature. Mary Tudor was briefly Queen of France before marrying Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk, and their quartered arms are displayed above the gateway. The gatehouse has red brick end walls with three-storey polygonal turrets at each corner. The turrets feature blank panels with double trefoil heads and cruciform loopholes, topped with ogee crocketed pinnacles and figural finials. Between the turrets is a stepped gable. The main arched doorway is simple; above it is a panel of diaper-pattern moulded brick with traces of stucco, and above the 20th-century replacement upper window is a panel bearing Mary Tudor's arms. The upper side walls of the gatehouse are timber-framed with brick nogging, much restored, jettied out over an open brick arcade. The upper storey contains two rooms divided by a chimney-stack.

During 19th-century restoration, Elizabethan wall-paintings were discovered on the eastern side of this stack. These naive depictions show a hunting scene and the four Ages of Man, with accompanying inscriptions: 'This do I all the day' (young man hunting), 'Thus do I while I may' (man with woman), 'Thus did I when I might' (middle-aged man watching), and 'Good Lord, will this world last ever' (bent old man leaning on a stick).

A depression in the ground shows the gatehouse originally spanned a moat, said to have surrounded the entire site. The gatehouse connects to the house via a late 16th-century colonnade of red brick with a timber-framed upper storey containing a single long room, possibly intended as a long gallery. The colonnade has nine semi-circular-headed arches with keystones and demi-columns inside, retaining remains of original render. Two similar arches were inserted into each side of the ground storey of the gatehouse.

Of the medieval house reputed to have stood here, nothing survives. From the period contemporary with the gatehouse, three bays remain, including and to the north of the main entrance. The jettied upper storey is timber-framed with brick nogging, the jetty underbuilt in early 19th-century white brick. Moulded mullion remains survive in the upper storey, with a bressummer featuring running leaf carving. The roof combines plaintiles with bands of fishscale tiling. A large chimney-stack at the end of the range has a recessed panel with trefoiled decoration on its high base, similar to that on the gatehouse, and the bases of three barrel shafts, repaired in plain rectangular form. This stack was originally internal, and the frame extended for at least two more bays northward.

Inside, a two-and-a-half-bay hall is partitioned from a 19th-century corridor. The main cross-beams have complex roll-moulding, and joists are moulded with ogee profile and leaf stops. Beside the chimney-stack, two wide carved spandrels suggest an original archway or window. Behind the stack, in a later backhouse, is a main beam with carved cresting and housings for joists and a trimmer. A separate range aligned east-west is encased in white brick with a dentil cornice and small-paned sash windows in square bays with tiled lean-to roofs to the ground storey; the upper storey has tripartite sashes in deep reveals. The interior is timber-framed with plain early 17th-century ceilings, ovolo-moulded mullions, and much reused timber.

By the early 19th century, the house had become a farmhouse.