Bury St Edmunds Guildhall

The Guildhall is one of the largest and most impressive secular medieval buildings in the country, and a rare survival of a civic building from this period.[2] The building, which was built with financial support from the wealthy Bury St Edmunds Abbey, dates back to the late 12th century.[3]

The Bury Chronicle records that John of Cobham and Walter de Heliun visited the guildhall in 1279.[3] The oldest part is the thirteenth-century stone entrance arch,[2] within the highly decorative porch was added in the late 15th century.[4]

Its unique roof structure combines East Anglian queen posts with king posts and has been attributed to the fifteenth century, although some suggest it is midfourteenth century. Many timbers are covered in yellow ochre, usually a sixteenth-century feature.[2]

Following the dissolution of the monasteries in the late 1530s, the guildhall passed to the control of the town of Bury St Edmunds.[3]

During the Second world War the Royal Observer Corps established a control centre in the guildhall.[5]

In 2019, dating of the roof and entrance door was requested by Historic England to inform on-going restoration work. Eighteen timbers were sampled from the roof, showing likely felling dates between AD 1263–1376. Two of the samples still had complete sapwood and were felled in the winter of AD 1376/77, implying that construction of the roof took place in AD 1377 or soon thereafter. The door boards were made from oak imported from the Baltic region, three samples indicating felling between AD 1253–1439, with the latest possible date of AD 1461.[2]