The Old Rectory

Details

The following buildings shall be included:

CREETING ST MARY

TM 05 NE

4/202 The Old Rectory

GV II

Rectory, later used as school, now a private house. Dated 1863. Architect Henry Woodyer. Flint rubble with Bathstone windows and red brick dressings including moulded brick verges, eaves, string courses, quoins and relieving arches. Plain tile gable-ended steeply-pitched roofs. Lateral and axial stacks with tall red brick shafts. Original cast-iron drainpipes with ornate rainwater heads.

High Victorian Gothic style, an interestly integrated composition with an imaginative use of materials.

Plan: Asymmetrical double depth plan in 2 parallel ranges; a long entrance hall in the north front range with a lateral stack on the left, an entrance porch on the right and staircase in the right end. The 3 principal rooms (drawing room, study or parlour and dining room) in the deeper south range behind, facing the south garden. and a series of service rooms and back staircase in the left east end partly contained in the remains of an older range of circa early C19 or perhaps of earlier origin.

Exterior: 2 storeys, attics and cellars. Asymmetrical elevations. The north front has short gabled wing to left, gabled single storey porch to right of knapped flint with date and Latin inscription, diagonal buttresses, chamfered 2-centred arch and moulded inner doorway, both with original doors. large 3-light mullion-transom ground floor windows and small 2-light first floor windows with small gables above breaking the eaves, over which a tall brick lateral stack rises.

The west elevation is a fine asymmetrical composition, the gable ends of the 2 parallel and staggered range,the wider rear range to the right is set back and has a large stone 6-light traceried bay window with a brick relieving arch, to the left of which is a gabled stair oriel on a complex brick corbel, in the angle of the 2 ranges but integral with the projecting narrower left range which has 2 stair windows stepped up on a stepped moulded brick stringcourse.

The south garden front has 2 large 3-light windows on the ground floor with capped heads to the lights and similar windows in a large stone canted bay on the right with a pierced quatrefoil parapet. Above to the right a double 2-light and a 4-light window under small gables and in the roof to the left 2 half-hipped dormers with an axial stack between, clasping the ridge.

On the north east corner a circa early C19 or earlier range remodelled as part of the service wing; rendered and with gable-ended pantile roof and an early C19 sash with glazing bars in the north gable.

Interior: The interior is largely unaltered and most of the original joinery survives including the panelled doors on both the ground and first floors. The porch inner doorway has a moulded stone 2-centred arch and plank double doors with ornate wrought-iron hinges. The hall has a narrow chimney breast entirely panelled but its chimneypiece is missing and a wide pine staircase with widely spaced balusters, square newels and moulded handrail and string. The drawing room has a Jacobean style carved wooden chimneypiece and moulded cornice and shafts to the window bays.

The dining room has similar cornice and shafts to the window bay but the small chimneypiece is later. Only the corridor, but not the rooms on the first floor, was inspected.

Source: Signed drawings by Woodyer are in the Suffolk Record Office ref: SR1 PHP FF1-26-1.

Listing NGR: TM0947756621

Legacy

The contents of this record have been generated from a legacy data system.

Legacy System number:

279456

Legacy System:

LBS

End of official list entry

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