Harpers Music Room

BURY ST EDMUNDS

TL8564SW ABBEYGATE STREET 639-1/14/133 (North side) 12/07/72 No.23 (Formerly Listed as: ABBEYGATE STREET No.23) (Formerly Listed as: ABBEYGATE STREET No.24)

GV II

Includes: No.7 Harpers Music Room LOWER BAXTER STREET. Formerly 2 houses with shops, now one, with a shop on the ground storey and offices above. Early C16, with mid-C19 alterations. Timber-framed, with exposed framing along Lower Baxter Street and a white brick front with a parapet and quadrant corner to Abbeygate Street; plaintiled roofs, moulded cornice to parapet. EXTERIOR: 3 storeys to Abbeygate Street frontage, 2 storeys and attics to remainder. 3 windows to each of the upper storeys on the front, all small-paned sashes in deep reveals with stucco architraves. The centre, with one window, breaks forward slightly and there is a plain flat pilaster at each end. The shop front has a small dentil cornice to the wooden fascia and the windows are divided by 3 flat wooden pilasters with carved Ionic capitals. The Lower Baxter Street frontage is in 4 bays, 3 with exposed framing to the upper storey above a jetty supported by a moulded and castellated bressumer; render below. 3 inserted small-paned sash windows to the upper storey and 3 blocked C16 mullioned windows, one of 3 lights; the others with similar mullions are smaller, fitted into larger openings. Peg-holes and replacement studding indicate that this frontage originally had windows all along the upper storey. INTERIOR: one ground-floor bay has the massive plain joists which form the jetty exposed in the ceiling, and one small section of the upper storey, accessible from the shop, has some main components visible, including a tie-beam with a small solid bracket. The remainder of the upper storey is approached from No.7 Lower Baxter Street. The narrow range to Abbeygate Street has been raised; the principal upper room has a small C19 foliated plaster cornice, but no earlier features are exposed anywhere. In the Lower Baxter Street range the supporting bracket of a boxed-in collar-purlin indicates that there was a crown-post roof.

Listing NGR: TL8544064224