Listed Building: ST PETER'S HALL (282343)

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