Details
SOUTH ELMHAM, ST. PETER
TM 38 NW
2/84 St. Peter's Hall
1.9.53
GV II*
Manor house on a moated site. C15, C16 and C17, but probably with an earlier
core to part. 2 storeys; attics to part. L-shaped form: main range aligned
east-west; rear wing, north-south. Mainly in ashlar stone, but also partly in
brick, rendered flint rubble, and render over timber-framing. Plaintiled
roofs. A stone chimney-stack projects slightly from the eastern side of the
south front, and another stack, having 2 square red brick shafts with moulded
bases, forms part of the west gable. An important feature of the building is
the fine series of medieval 3-light stone-traceried windows, which are clearly
not in situ, and are thought to have come from the Augustinian nunnery at
Flixton following the Dissolution. The main entrance is through a storied
porch on the north side: pointed arched doorway, with multiple mouldings and a
4-light traceried window above, diagonal buttresses, roof pitch raised in C19.
Round the base of the porch and along the eastern half of-the north front are
reused stone panels with flushwork decoration, including the crowned sacred
monogram and 'M'. To the right (west) of the porch there are indications,
including a blocked doorway, of an earlier core to this part of the house.
Cross-entry inside, and further evidence of reused stonework. To the east of
the entry the former hall, which was divided into 2 by a large inserted
chimney-stack in the late C16, has now been returned to a single room, with
the ceiling raised, and the original external stack reopened; this has a Tudor
arch with multiple mouldings. To the west of the entry, a large 3-bay upper
room, with heavy moulded cross-beams and C16 square panelling, was divided up
later. This part of the building may have had a flat lead-covered roof
originally: the present roof is a C19 replacement. Above the eastern half of
the front the roof was replaced in the C17: 5 bays have 2 rows of stepped butt
purlins; deep, narrow chamfered principals, and the rafters in 2 separate
lengths, tenoned into the lower purlins; some reused medieval rafters around
the site of the chimnmey-stack. The timber-framed north-south range is an
early C17 addition mainly of service rooms. For information on the background
of the house and its owners, cf. Nesta Evans, 'The Tasburghs of South Elmham:
the rise and fall of a Suffolk gentry family', in Procs. Suff. Inst. Arch &
Hist., Vol. XXXIV Pt.4, 1980.
Listing NGR: TM3360085342