56, ABBEYGATE STREET (See details for further address information)

No. 56 Abbeygate Street, Bury St Edmunds

This is a corner shop building incorporating Nos. 1 and 2A Whiting Street. The structure originates from the late 15th, 16th and 17th centuries, though it was refronted in the early 19th century.

The building is timber-framed, rendered and lined, with a slate roof featuring a plain parapet and paired mutules to the heavy moulded cornice. It rises to three storeys with cellars and occupies a corner site with an L-shaped plan, the rear range running behind No. 55 Abbeygate Street.

On the Abbeygate Street frontage are two windows per storey: 12-pane sashes to the first storey and 9-pane sashes to the second storey, all set in heavy cased frames. The shop front has a moulded fascia continuing around into Whiting Street, with shop windows featuring vertical glazing-bars.

The Whiting Street frontage shows a drop in level between ground and first storey windows. A range of five windows comprises sashes in cased frames, some with glazing-bars, plus seven 20th-century large-paned sash windows at ground level. A wide doorway with fluted columns, plain architrave and dentil frieze has been fitted with 20th-century Ashburton marble columns behind.

Interior features extensive cellars. The medieval cellar below the Whiting Street range has walls of flint coursed with lines of tiles, and a heavy chamfered main ceiling-beam supported on piers of reused Abbey stone with joists lodged above. A later cellar below the rear range is lined with coursed limestone blocks, connected to the medieval cellar by a 19th-century brick-lined section.

Heavy exposed timbers on the ground storey reveal at least four stages of building development. The oldest element comprises four bays at the south end of the Whiting Street range, originally a single-ended Wealden house with a two-bay open hall linked to a jettied service bay by a wide cross-entry. Empty mortices in the central beam show the service bay was later divided in two; the cross-beam at the lower end of the hall retains mortices for a former screen. An inserted ceiling in the former hall is jettied along the street and carries multiple roll-mouldings on its timbers. The main cross-beams have an ornate carved boss at their intersection enclosing a circle of flowers within a foliated surround.

Associated with this range, and probably contemporary with it, is a two-storey two-bay range extending behind the hall, with a short gap between the two frames formerly containing a chimney-stack. This range has a plain crown-post roof with crown-posts braced downwards to the tie-beams and upwards to the collar-purlin.

A further two-bay two-storey range was added to the east with very little difference in date. This also features a crown-post roof, braced to the collar-purlin only.

To the north of the Wealden section is a long single-bay room, also jettied, with flat unchamfered heavy joists and main beams carrying a delicate cresting ornament enclosed by roll-mouldings.

Further north, the two corner bays have plain heavy joists and chamfered main beams with a long dragon-beam supported by a corner-post. On its two external faces are carved slightly-mutilated figures of a man and woman in early 16th-century costume. The outer studding is missing, but mortices indicate the former positions of doors and windows for a shop.

Within the angle of the front and rear is a restored Jacobean stair with carved and pierced splat balusters and moulded handrails. The ornate newel-posts have open lantern finials. The roof over the Whiting Street range has been replaced.

Nos. 1 and 2A Whiting Street were listed separately on 12 July 1972.