Warwick House

BURY ST EDMUNDS

TL8563NW GUILDHALL STREET 639-1/15/378 (East side) 12/07/72 No.47 Warwick House

GV II

House. C18. Timber-framed and rendered; concrete pantiles; a wood modillion eaves cornice. EXTERIOR: 2 storeys and attics. 4 sash windows to the 1st storey, the 2 outer windows tripartite, all in flush cased frames with a single vertical bar to the main lights. 2 tripartite sashes without glazing bars to the ground storey. 3 flat-headed dormers have 2-light single bar casement windows. A central 6-panel door has a wood doorcase with moulded architrave, plain console brackets and a pediment. 2 end chimney-stacks have plain rectangular red brick shafts. The rear wall has very varied fenestration. A long 2-storey timber framed rear range in 2 phases of building also has various windows, including one upper small-paned sliding sash. INTERIOR: extensive cellars: the wall fronting Guildhall Street is old, with flint rubble and render, but most of the walling is in C19 brick, progressively extended, with the remains of numerous wine bins. Front range of the house c1700, extended at the back, and probably raised, later in the C18. Large entrance hall with the remains of dadoes with horizontal boarding and ornately carved dado rails and skirtings. Similar boarded dadoes with simpler rails and skirtings also survive in the room above the hall. A mid-C18 stair with turned balusters and moulded handrails divided into 2 at the half landing. The principal rooms to left and right of the hall are fully panelled: bolection mouldings on the right and early C19 sunk panels, with a semicircular alcove to the side of the fireplace, on the left. The fine Adam style fireplace surround in this room is a C20 introduction from elsewhere. The 1st storey rooms lead off a wide rear corridor. Attics, divided into a series of rooms, are mainly plastered but with principal rafters exposed: 6 bays, butt purlins and a ridge piece possibly introduced during later repairs. The eastern part of the rear range was probably originally a free standing outbuilding and has fragments of weatherboarding. Both parts of the rear seem built of reused timbers. For most of the C19 the house was occupied by members of the Clay family, ale and porter merchants, later wine and spirit

merchants, first mentioned in James Oakes' Diary in 1808. Their trade would account for the progressive enlargement of the cellars.

Listing NGR: TL8530163797