Moyses Hall

A merchant house of the late 12th century, considerably restored and altered in 1858. Now a museum, though historically the building has served many purposes including an inn, a Bridewell, a prison, and a police station. It is constructed in flint and stone with two steep gables and plain-tiled roofs. The building is a Scheduled Ancient Monument.

Exterior

The main front presents two storeys with an attic to part and a cellar beneath. Wide freestone buttresses are positioned at each end of the front, with a similar central buttress dividing the two gabled halves. A moulded stone string course runs across the entire front at first storey level.

The right half retains two linked original Norman windows beneath roll-moulded arches resting on colonnettes with crocket capitals. These are rectangular 2-light windows with roll-moulded surrounds. The left half displays a 15th-century traceried 2-light window in a rectangular surround on the first storey; the dividing mullion bears a carving of a wolf guarding St Edmund's head. On the second storey are two early 19th-century 2-light pointed-headed windows with square leaded panes and stone surrounds. The ground storey contains four 19th-century 2-light windows with diamond leaded panes, stone reveals, and moulded segmental-headed surrounds. An entrance door on the right, between two windows, has a matching moulded segmental-headed surround.

The east wall, constructed in a mixture of flint and stone blocks, is largely a 19th-century reconstruction. Its ground storey features a semicircular-headed 2-light window and a doorway with triangular pediment and architrave with wood keystone. A further two-storey section to the north has flint walling alternating with red brick bands and cross windows with rectangular surrounds and moulded brick hood-moulds.

A skeleton clock dial is set in the apex of the south gable. The clock mechanism, with birdcage frame, was made by John Moore & Sons of Clerkenwell, London and dated 1876, installed by Vale & Richardson of 14 Abbeygate Street, Bury St Edmunds. A timber closed belfry above contains a clock chime of three bells: the two quarter bells date to 1876 and were cast by John Taylor & Co. of Loughborough, while the hour bell dates to 1806 and was cast by the Whitechapel bell foundry.

Interior

The ground storey is covered by stone groin vaults. The western part comprises three bays and the wider eastern part six bays, both supported on massive circular piers with simple square capitals. A 16th-century brick arch with shallow pointed head links the two halves of the building.

The rear range to the north-east was originally an open arcaded storage area known as The Passage. The west wall contains wide 16th-century brick arches. The hall and solar occupy the first storey, accessed via a 19th-century stone newel stair within an added lean-to of white brick with slate roof. This stair has a 2-light diamond-leaded casement window in Gothic style on the first storey; beside it on the rear wall are two small blocked barred windows inserted during the building's use as a prison.

The two 12th-century windows to the hall have nook-shafts with roll moulding continued over the arch. A 16th-century fireplace in the dividing wall with the solar has a timber lintel and stone jambs, both bearing a smaller version of the roll-moulding seen around the window arches. The jamb on one side has been moved inwards. Beside it stands a pointed-headed stone doorway. In the solar, an early 16th-century stone fireplace surround features a double ogee-moulding to the shallow arch. To the left of this fireplace is an altered Norman doorway, probably originally for an internal stair, with a reset 14th-century head.

The rear range, which seems to have originally extended further north, spans two-and-a-half bays and has a high timber-framed rear wall with two middle rails. The 16th-century roof has clasped purlins with hollow chamfer moulding and short cranked windbraces. Arched braces to the collars are corbelled out from the walls. There are no original tie-beams, though three later re-used ties have been inserted.