Description

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

External Links

• Historic England Listing
• Wikidata Q26552006

External links are from the relevant listing authority and, where applicable, Wikidata. Wikidata IDs may be related buildings as well as this specific building. If you want to add or update a link, you will need to do so by editing the Wikidata entry.

Recommended Books

• 
  Wiltshire (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Liverpool: Pevsner City Guide (Pevsner Architectural Guides: City Guides)
• 
  Norfolk 1: Norwich and North-East: Norwich and North-east v. 1 (Pevsner Architectural Guides: Buildings of England)
• 
  Old House Handbook: A Practical Guide to Care and Repair
• 
  Pioneers of Modern Design: From William Morris to Walter Gropius (Penguin Art & Architecture)
• 
  Building Small Projects (New Best of Fine Woodworking)