4 And 5, Whiting Street

A house, later divided into shops and offices, dating from the 16th century, situated in Whiting Street, Bury St Edmunds. The building is timber-framed and rendered in panels with old roughcast, and has a tiled roof with a modillion eaves cornice. It is two storeys and attics high, with a jettied street frontage. The front has a three-window range featuring 12-pane sashes in flush cased frames. On the ground floor, there is a low canted bay window on the right with glazing bars, alongside a larger 20th-century bay window designed in an 18th-century style on the left. A 20th-century shop door is set within a moulded architrave with rectangular glazing bars to the fanlight. Two gabled dormers are visible. The building abuts No.6 and has a second entrance door below an extension to the jetty, with a reeded and shouldered architrave; the upper storey forms part of No.6.

The interior is divided between Nos 4 and 5. A cellar, serving both properties, is located beneath No.4. Beneath the two-bay front range is a modern room with a fine moulded ceiling featuring heavy cross-beams and joists with a double ogee moulding, believed to be an addition. In another rear wing section, a two-bay area has a heavy, plain ceiling with a large chamfered main beam and unchamfered joists. No.4 occupies part of the ground storey: the northern bay of the front range and a long rear wing. The front room has 18th-century panelling, a heavy moulded cornice, and a corner fireplace. The rear wing contains two further single-bay rooms, one with panelling similar to the front room, and the other with an exposed timber ceiling including a chamfered main beam and plain joists. An internal stack links the front and rear, although largely concealed except for a cast-iron bake-oven door.

No.5 occupies the remainder of the building: half the front range, and the whole upper storey. The front room is a continuation of the room in No.4, and they were probably originally one room, displaying a boxed-on main beam and remains of panelling. A back wall has been removed to give access to a single-storey rear wing, likely from the 19th century, but now completely modernised. The upper part of the two-storey rear wing is divided into two rooms, with most features covered. A section of the north wallplate and south wall, including part of the rebate for a shutter, remain visible, although the roof has been raised. The two upper rooms above the front range are combined into one, with boxed-in main beams and remains of a moulded plaster cornice in the north bay, alongside a panelled dado. The attic is divided into two rooms: one on the south with side purlins and a collar-purlin with remains of bracing for a crown-post roof; and one on the north with side purlins alone.