Listed Building: (466766)

Find out more about .

Grade I
Authority
Volume/Map/Item 466766
Date assigned 07 August 1952
Date last amended

Description

BURY ST EDMUNDS TL8564SW CORNHILL 639-1/7/295 (North side) 07/08/52 Moyses Hall GV I Includes: No.41 CORNHILL. Merchant house, later used for a variety of purposes, including an inn, a Bridewell, a prison and a police station; now a museum. Late C12, considerably restored and altered in 1858. In flint and stone with 2 steep gables to the plaintiled roofs. EXTERIOR: 2 storeys, attic to part, cellar to part. A wide freestone buttress at each end of the main front and a similar central buttress between the 2 gabled halves of the building. A moulded stone string course runs across the whole front at 1st storey level. The right half of the building has 2 linked original Norman windows beneath roll-moulded arches resting on colonnettes with crocket capitals. The windows are 2-light, rectangular in form with roll-moulded surrounds. The left half has a C15 traceried 2-light window in a rectangular surround on the 1st storey: the dividing mullion has a capital bearing a carving of a wolf guarding St Edmund's head. On the 2nd storey, 2 early C19 2-light pointed-headed windows with square leaded panes and stone surrounds. On the ground storey, four C19 2-light windows with diamond leaded panes have stone reveals and moulded segmental-headed surrounds. The entrance door on the right between 2 windows has a similar moulded segmental-headed surround. The east wall, in a mixture of flint and stone blocks, is mainly a C19 reconstruction. On the ground storey it has a semicircular headed 2-light window and a doorway with a triangular pediment and an architrave with wood keystone. A further 2-storey section to the north has flint walling alternating with red brick bands and cross windows with rectangular surrounds and moulded brick hood-moulds. A skeleton clock dial in the apex of the south gable. Clock with birdcage frame made by John Moore & Sons, Clerkenwell, London, dated 1876, installed by Vale & Richardson, 14 Abbeygate Street, Bury St Edmunds. Timber closed belfry containing clock chime of 3 bells, the 2 quarter bells of 1876 cast by John Taylor & Co. of Loughborough and the hour bell dated 1806, by the Whitechapel bell foundry. INTERIOR: stone groin-vaulted ground storey, the western part in 3 bays and the wider eastern part in 6 bays, supported on massive circular piers with simple square capitals. A C16 brick arch with a shallow pointed head now links the 2 halves of the building. The rear range on the north east was an open arcaded storage area known as The Passage. Along the west wall are wide C16 brick arches. The hall and solar are on the 1st storey, approached by a C19 stone newel stair in an added lean-to in white brick with a slate roof. This stair has a 2-light diamond-leaded casement window in Gothic style on the 1st storey; beside it on the rear wall are 2 small blocked barred windows inserted when the building was used as a prison. The 2 C12 windows to the hall have nook-shafts with a roll moulding which is continued over the arch. A C16 fireplace in the dividing wall with the solar has a timber lintel and stone jambs, both with a smaller version of the roll-moulding round the window arches. The jamb on one side has been moved inwards. Beside it, a pointed headed stone doorway. In the solar, the early C16 stone fireplace surround has a double ogee-moulding to the shallow arch. To the left of this fireplace is an altered Norman doorway probably originally for an internal stair, with a reset C14 head. The rear range, which seems to have originally extended further north, is in 2-and-a-half bays and has a high timber-framed rear wall with 2 middle rails. The C16 roof has clasped purlins with a hollow chamfer moulding and short cranked windbraces. Arched braces to the collars corbelled out from the walls. No original tie-beams, but 3 later re-used ties have been inserted. Scheduled Ancient Monument. (BOE: Pevsner N: Radcliffe E: Suffolk: London: 1974-: 152). Listing NGR: TL8530164370

External Links (1)

Sources (0)

Map

Location

Grid reference TL 85301 64370 (point)
Map sheet TL86SE

Related Monuments/Buildings (1)

Record last edited

Jan 20 2010 10:11AM

Comments and Feedback

Do you have any more information about this record? Please feel free to comment with information and photographs, or ask any questions, using the "Disqus" tool below. Comments are moderated, and we aim to respond/publish as soon as possible.