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Monument Types

• CHAPTER HOUSE (MEDIEVAL - 1066 AD to 1539 AD (between))

Associated Events

• Chapter House gas pipe (Ref: WCM100095)
• Chapter House Lawn (Ref: WCM100096)
• Chapter House area (Ref: WCM100171)
• Chapter House Lawn (Ref: WCM100192)
• Chapter House Roof (Ref: WCM101781)

Protected Status

• Listed Building

Full description

Medieval chapter house, part of the east claustral range of Worcester Cathedral Priory.

In origin, a circular building of Norman (late 11th-century) date, roofed with a tufa vault supported by a central column, with ten semi-circular ribs radiating out to engaged shafts on the wall faces. The ten bays thus formed were each lit by a single round-headed window (one of which survives on the north side). Below the windows the walls are decorated with a blind arcade of intersecting Norman arches. Beneath this there was formerly a continuous stone bench around the walls, removed to make room for library bookshelves. The masonry of the walls made use of two stone types to give a polychrome effect. The exterior of the building originally had Norman clasping buttresses (two survive on the north side). The building was remodelled c.1400, the walls being partly cut back and almost totally encased, to create a polygonal plan, with deep buttresses at the angles and new early Perpendicular windows. The remodelling was prompted by the failure of the Norman walls to withstand the thrust of the vault without outward movement {1}.

The Chapter House had a lead roof, valued at £60 in 1650; in the Civil War it was used as a powder magazine, and from 1675 until the mid-19th century, as a library {2}.

The Norman work probably dates to 1100-1115, fairly certainly before 1125. The niches divide the wall bench into seating for 95. Rebuilding took place probably in the later 14th century, though it had been repaired at an earlier date: the central pillar has early 13th-century characteristics, including a waterholding base. The doorway was repositioned in the rebuilding to fit the vaulting scheme of the cloister walk outside. It has been suggested that the interior of the Norman building was painted, with ten verses (one to each bay), roundels in the ceiling vault compartments, angels in the niches above the bench, and spiral bands, possibly with further verses, on the central pillar {3}.

Excavations (WCM 100096, 100192) around the exterior have revealed the base of a circular stone wall, concentric about the chapter house, with clasping buttresses opposite those of the chapter house and radial walls heading inwards. Dating (including a re-used late Saxon sculptural fragment in the excavated wall) indicates the wall is post late 10th-century and no later than the early 12th. Current interpretation favours a late pre-Conquest date, possibly the rotunda of a church (see WCM 96368), or possibly an ambulatory built around the chapter house itself, though this would be without known parallels {4}.

add ref to stone chamber adj buttress

add relevant parts of list description

Sources and further reading

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