Abbey House

Abbey House is a town house, now offices, on Angel Hill in Bury St Edmunds. It combines a late 16th-century core with later 18th-century and 19th-century ranges, behind a façade of circa 1820.

The front range displays two storeys and attics with a cellar to part. It is timber-framed in part and rendered, with a slate roof featuring a parapet and cornice. A seven-window range contains small-paned sashes in deep reveals with eared and shouldered architraves and stone sills. The central doorway has panelled reveals and soffit, with a six-panel door set within a projecting distyle Ionic porch. Both the front and rear parts of the house are built against a section of the precinct wall of the former Abbey of St Edmund.

The late 18th-century rear range is higher than the front and overlaps it on the north side. It is constructed in random flint with an admixture of stone blocks and red brick, with a plaintiled mansard roof and plain red brick parapet. This range contains two storeys and attics, with gable-end chimney-stacks, one truncated. Venetian windows with small-paned sashes face eastwards towards the Abbey Gardens on both ground and first storeys. Three flat-headed dormers with sash windows punctuate the lower slope of the roof. A single 12-pane sash window in a flush cased frame is set in the north gable wall.

Behind the south half of the front range, a mid-19th-century two-storey extension in flint and red brick with slate roof features segmental-arched window openings, now containing 20th-century replacement windows. This links to an earlier 19th-century range, also in flint and red brick with hipped slate roof, which was formerly free-standing.

Interior work in the left half of the front range reveals fragmentary remains of a jettied late 16th-century timber frame. The cellars, now used as offices, retain original beam-and-joist ceilings. The walls were slightly raised and the roof replaced at a shallower pitch during extensive building work in the 1820s.

A fine mid-to-late 18th-century stair with enriched turned balusters and plain handrail rises from the rear of the central entrance hall. A similar stair, probably originally part of the main flight, stands in the north-east corner of the front range.

The late 18th-century rear range was designed with impressive rooms on the ground and first storeys. The interior of the Venetian window is enriched with reeded Ionic pilasters and moulded cornice above the lights; shutters with sunk panels are present. Doorways have moulded surrounds and dentilled architraves, with heavy plaster modillion cornices to the ceilings. The walls display ornate plaster swags with bows supported by lions' heads. A roundel containing a plaster head in profile hangs from the swag over the rear door by a bow and cord.

The upper room has been compromised by later partitions that until recently divided the Venetian window, and a low inserted ceiling cuts off the arch. Some interior mouldings are missing and no ornamental plasterwork remains. The upper storeys of the rear range form a complex of small rooms and attics.

The building's development between circa 1770 and circa 1830 is documented in a series of 18th and early 19th-century prints and paintings of Bury St Edmunds.