98A, 99 AND 100, RISBYGATE STREET

This is an early 19th-century house and two cottages, incorporating a 17th-century core. The building, located on Risbygate Street in Bury St Edmunds, was later combined into a single house with a workshop. It is constructed of painted brick, render over a timber frame, and has slate roofs.

Numbers 98A and 99 are two-storey, while number 100 is three-storey. An internal chimney stack sits between numbers 98A and 99, with their roofs at slightly differing levels. Number 98A features a half-glazed door on the upper storey, and number 99 has two sash windows without glazing bars set in shallow reveals. Number 100’s front is painted brick, with rendered sides. A bulge in the render above the first floor on the east gable indicates a later addition of the top storey. The roof has a wide overhang and a paired modillion eaves cornice. The front of number 100 has a three-window arrangement; the first storey has a central 12-pane sash window with shallow reveals, flanked by two segmental tripartite bay windows with 12-pane central sashes and smaller side lights. These bays may have originally extended to ground floor level. The ground storey of all three sections is now occupied by workshops. A rear wing is connected to number 100 by a large, offset red brick chimney stack.

The ground storey of the workshops has lost its historic features. On the first storey of number 100, the ceiling has ovolo-moulded cross-beams set slightly skew. The main post at the front has been removed, and the windows have shutters with sunk panels. In the eastern half of the rear, a two-bay room on the first storey has an ovolo-moulded main beam and good, widely spaced joists. An early 19th-century staircase to the added top floor features stick balusters, a ramped handrail, and moulded newels. The roofs are largely obscured, with the exception of a small late section. At the rear of numbers 98A and 99, a wing at a right angle to the front shows late 17th-century timber framing with widely-spaced studs on the upper storey and a large, possibly re-used, main beam. The roof is mostly replaced, but retains the remains of clasped purlins and rafters with ridges and saddles.