Building record SUY 247 - 2 King Street

2 King Street comprises the majority of an imposing three-storied gault-brick Georgian town house in the historic centre of Sudbury, immediately opposite the eastern end of St Peter’s Church. The house appears to have been extended and sub-divided as early as the 1840s to create 1 King Street, which occupies the ground and first-floor rooms to the left of the fine Doric entrance porch in the centre of the symmetrical façade. An additional property, 1A King Street, occupies all the left-hand rooms on the second floor. A plaque on the south-eastern gable commemorates the building’s construction in 1816 by Thomas Jones, a wealthy brewer and wine merchant who probably used his new house to impress the townsfolk a year before his controversial election to the first of six terms as mayor. The unusually extensive cellar with a wide external access suggests it also formed his business premises, although by the 1820s he had been succeeded by William Adams, whose descendants owned it until 1930 and added a single-storied retail shop to the right. A wine merchant remained on the site until the 1980s. Early maps and photographs show an extensive complex of outbuildings in the rear yard, including a large warehouse and bottle-washing plant, but the last of these is believed to have been demolished in the 1990s to accommodate a three-storey extension that was never built. The interior contained only commercial offices for much of the 20th century and has been stripped of all but one fireplace, but in other respects it remains very well preserved with an exceptional number of high-quality original fixtures and fittings including a fine staircase, plaster cornices, carved door surrounds, window shutters and brass door furniture. Some changes were made to the layout early in the 19th century, perhaps during a partial office conversion, while fire screens and other additions were inserted in the 20th, but in general the building is little altered and represents one of the best Regency houses in Sudbury (S1).