25 And 26, Churchgate Street

This is an early 16th-century shop building, originally divided into two separate premises, located on Churchgate Street, Bury St Edmunds. The building is timber-framed and rendered, with a prominent brick plinth and a continuous jetty. It has a plain tile roof with a simple eaves soffit.

The building is two storeys high and comprises a two-bay front range and a short, right-angled rear range. A beam positioned above the jetty level in the east gable wall suggests a former carriage entrance into a rear yard. The jetty has been widened to accommodate the insertion of sash windows on the upper storey. The front range has two windows per bay on the upper storey, consisting of six-paned sashes in projecting cased frames. The ground storey features two 19th-century shop windows, each with pilasters and a moulded cornice. The left shop window has slender glazing bars, while the right has a single dividing mullion. There are two adjacent four-panelled doors in plain architraves, one of which is blocked.

The ground storey’s interior retains exposed timber ceilings. The front range originally contained a 19th-century chimney-stack set within the west gable wall. It was formerly unheated and divided into two shops by a stud partition, which has since been removed. The rear range, covered by a single span roof, was also originally divided, with a chimney-stack containing two back-to-back hearths separating the two rooms. A doorway with a plain four-centred arched head in the back wall of the front range provided access to the western room of the rear range, and this room retains an open, plastered fireplace with a plain timber lintel. The ceiling beams and joists throughout the ground storey are plain, with the joists unchamfered. Other features include wide studding, tension bracing, and housings in the wallplates for diamond-mullioned windows. Later inserted upper ceilings are present, and the roofs are inaccessible. Three blocked original stair-traps are visible, one in the eastern front bay and one in each of the rear rooms, indicating the building’s irregular division upon initial construction, with each dwelling having a shop at the front and a rear living room, but the eastern half with access to the upper storey.