Warwick House

Warwick House is an 18th-century house located on Guildhall Street, Bury St Edmunds. It is timber-framed and rendered, with a wood modillion eaves cornice and concrete pantile roof. The front elevation has two storeys and attics. The first storey features four sash windows, the two outer being tripartite, all within flush cased frames with a single vertical bar to the main lights. The ground storey has two tripartite sash windows without glazing bars. Three flat-headed dormers are fitted with two-light casement windows with a single vertical bar. A central six-panel door is set within a wood doorcase featuring a moulded architrave, plain console brackets, and a pediment. Two end chimney stacks have plain rectangular red brick shafts. The rear wall exhibits varied fenestration, and a long two-storey timber-framed range extending in two phases of building also shows various windows, including a small-paned sliding sash window at the upper level.

The interior includes extensive cellars, with an old flint rubble and rendered wall facing Guildhall Street, but largely 19th-century brick construction with remains of wine bins. The front range of the house dates back to approximately 1700, with a rear extension and likely raising occurring later in the 18th century. The entrance hall retains remnants of dadoes with horizontal boarding and ornately carved dado rails and skirtings. A similar boarded dado with simpler rails and skirtings is also present in the room above the hall. A mid-18th-century staircase features turned balusters and moulded handrails, divided at the half landing. The principal rooms on either side of the hall are fully panelled, with bolection mouldings on the right and early 19th-century sunk panels, including a semicircular alcove beside the fireplace on the left. A fine Adam-style fireplace surround in this room is a 20th-century addition from elsewhere. The first-storey rooms lead off a wide rear corridor. The attics, divided into several rooms, are mainly plastered, with exposed principal rafters, butt purlins, and a ridge piece, possibly introduced during later repairs. The eastern part of the rear range was likely originally a free-standing outbuilding and has fragments of weatherboarding. Both parts of the rear appear to be constructed of reused timbers. The house was occupied by members of the Clay family, ale and porter merchants, later wine and spirit merchants, from the early 19th century, as mentioned in James Oakes' Diary in 1808. Their trade explains the progressive enlargement of the cellars.