Building record SUY 168 - Garden Wall at 411-42 Market Hill

The building on the site of 41-42 Market Hill was completely destroyed by fire in September 2015, leaving only its cellars and boundary walls intact. The Ordnance Survey of 1884 shows a spacious rear garden containing a medieval well, substantial trees, perimeter paths and a greenhouse in its south-western corner. This garden was reached, as today, by a narrow alley from Gainsborough Street to the north, but by 1904 had been reduced to half its former size by a new extension on the east. It also contained a mid-19th century garden shed built into a curved recess in the slightly earlier boundary wall and entered directly from the alley. This shed appears to have consisted of an open section adjoining the entrance on the north, possibly enclosing a water cistern, and a small roofed section on the south that was rendered internally and probably operated as a privy. Its external walls reflect the Mock Gothic style fashionable in the mid-Victorian period and it represents a garden folly imitating a medieval ruin. Its arched northern door and blind recesses appear convincingly medieval at first sight, but in fact consist of 19th century materials including brick, tile, flint, re-used stone (that is probably genuinely medieval) and large numbers of over-fired wasters from local brick kilns. As a piece of 19th century garden archaeology it is of considerable visual and historic interest, particularly given its link to Sudbury’s once great brick manufacturing industry, but its soft lime mortar has been weakened by ivy and the structure is crumbling and leaning (S1).