St Denys

St Denys is a house in Bury St Edmunds with a 15th-century timber-framed core and an 18th-century ashlar front. It is listed Grade II*.

The front range presents two storeys and attics, faced in ashlar to Honey Hill with a stone parapet, cornice and plinth with splayed top. This classical facade was added during the ownership of Thomas Singleton, a stone mason who also built the Town Hall at Cornhill. The front features rusticated quoins and a three-window range. The two outer windows on each storey are tripartite with 12-pane central lights. The centre breaks forward with plain pilasters to the first storey, enclosing a 12-pane sash window above the entrance. A raised stone band runs below the windows on each storey. The entrance is a recessed 6-panel door with raised fielded panels set in a wide porch with paired pilasters banded with vermiculated rustications, a frieze ornamented with paterae and a cornice. The long rear wing is faced in late 17th-century red brick on the west side with a plain cornice and has two storeys. The windows are 3-light casements with segmental-arched heads and square-leaded panes.

The interior reveals the 15th-century structure. The front range originally had a two-cell plan with a jettied service-room to the left of a central cross-entry and a one-and-a-half bay open hall to the right. The building may have been of Wealden form, though conclusive evidence is lacking. The partition at the lower end of the former open hall is now concealed above the realigned cross-entry. It has a richly moulded and embattled spere beam with evidence for braced spere posts, supporting close-studding to the roof ridge. The mouldings continue along the middle rail of the rear wall to an open truss of arched-braced collar form, now fragmentary. The main post has a polygonal buttress shaft with a moulded capital at the springing of a steep arched brace. The collar-purlin is clasped between upper and lower collars. The timbers are unsmoke-blackened but show traces of late 16th- and early 17th-century colouring in red and white. Slight remains of an early 16th-century inserted floor over the hall survive, with moulded joists and a truncated main beam.

Thomas Singleton made major alterations in the later 18th century. An early 18th-century dog-leg stair with turned balusters links the front and rear ranges. The rear range extends four bays. Two bays were originally storied, and two contain an open hall whose initial function may have been industrial rather than domestic. The roof is smoke-blackened with a tall plain rough crown-post braced to the collar-purlin with small solid braces, with widely-spaced studding in the gable. The two storied bays have massive plain joists and an unblackened roof of crown-post type. A partition formerly separated these two bays on the first storey.