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Monument Types

• GREAT HALL (MEDIEVAL - 1066 AD to 1539 AD)
• GREAT HALL (POST MEDIEVAL - 1540 AD to 1900 AD)
• HOUSE (POST MEDIEVAL - 1540 AD to 1900 AD)

Associated Events

• Watching brief, Guesten Lawn sewer trenches (Ref: WCM100030)
• Worcester Cathedral: Excavation outside SE transept (Ref: WCM100265)
• Worcester Cathedral: Guesten Hall lawn (water main) (Ref: WCM100266)
• Worcester Cathedral: Watching brief, Guesten Hall lawn (Ref: WCM100267)
• Guesten Hall Lawn (Ref: WCM100303)

Protected Status

• Scheduled Monument
• Listed Building

Full description

Medieval monastic guest hall, now surviving in part as a ruin.

It was a five bay ground-floor hall, probably built c.1326. Its open timber roof was of arch-braced type, in eight bays, whose trusses did not correspond with the window openings in the long walls. Cusped V-struts rose from the cambered collars. Purlins on three levels were braced by four tiers of cusped wind-braces, with smaller quatrefoiled braces across the angles of heavily moulded panels below the lowest purlins. Only the east wall now stands, with two full-height windows and two smaller windows at a higher level, probably to clear the top of an adjoining building. The tracery was of Decorated, reticulated, type. The Guesten Hall was demolished in 1862 after a long period of decline and became a contemporary cause celebre for antiquarians and architects. The roof was salvaged, adapted, and re-used at Holy Trinity Church, Shrub Hill, and eventually removed to Avoncroft Museum, where it is preserved. A two-storey porch stood at its south-west corner, and its south gable wall was refronted in the 18th century (see below) {1}.

Willis noted that its proportions had been approximately those of a pitched-roofed double cube. The masonry of its north end wall terminated at wall-plate level and was timber-framed above, with foliated openings to let out the smoke. There was also evidence of a smoke louvre in the middle of the ridge, above an open central hearth. Willis also noted the poor mechanical design of the building in terms of the thrust of the roof trusses unrelated to the external buttressing. The high end and dais was at the north end; the south wall may originally have contained service entries. The Guesten Hall may have been allocated to the Dean's accommodation at the Dissolution. In the mid-18th century it was modernised, as part of the Dean's house, by the insertion of two floors, making three storeys. The south wall was completely rebuilt c.1740 and the roof gable above hipped, to allow concealment behind a horizontal parapet, the whole being given a neo-gothic treatment. The entrance was moved to the centre of the south wall, and gave access to a central corridor with service rooms off it. A chimney stack was introduced as part of a new transverse wall. The new first floor contained a great dining room, named the Audit Hall, extending across the width of the building. Bedrooms occupied the rest of the first floor north of the new transverse wall; there were garrets on the second floor above {2}.

According to Noake, the hall was erected by Prior Wulstan de Bransford, for guests, and for the court of the manor of Guesten-hall, where audits of the manor tenants took place. It was probably the hall referred to in 1593 as that attached to the Dean's house that was to be repaired for the annual audit and other meetings. Noake also suggested that it was this building 'the Deanery Hall' in which a staircase was to be built 'up to the dining room' in 1685, which, if correct, would suggest the insertion of an upper floor at a date well before the mid-18th-century alterations {3}.

Excavations (WCM 100192) outside the chapter house (WCM 96372) found a subterranean stone chamber backfilled with debris including pottery and food remains, suggested to be possibly derived from clearing up after one of the annual audit feasts in this building {4}.
[{8} (need additional reference: paper on food remains - Archaeol J)]


SAM 343a

Cross-reference to: 96375, The Prior's House complex

Monastic ruins 620-1/3/3
22/5/54

II*

Monastic Ruins. Appendages of the Benedictine monastery of which the Cathedral was the monastic church. Comprising remains of the Guesten Hall, circa 1320, and vaulted undercrofts of Norman buildings, probably monastic dormitory and infirmary.{9}

This monument includes the partial remains of a hall and chapel situated on the east side of the College Green part of Worcester Cathedral Precincts. The monument survives as the eastern wall of a guest hall and the southern wall of a chapel that were constructed from sandstone in 1320 and mainly destroyed in 1864. The hall wall is approximately 24m long and is orientated north to south with stepped buttresses situated at the northern and southern ends. The wall has four pointed double chamfered window arches with the remains of a fifth at the southern end. The two northern windows are small with tiled splays and the northern arch retains decorated stone tracery, hoodmould and angel face label stops. The two southern windows are much larger and retain parts of stone mullions and transoms and the lower sections of both windows are partially filled with large stone blocks. The fifth window is defined by the remains of mullions and voussoirs springing from the southern side of the wall. Below the two northern windows is a doorway with a pointed arch and a later blocked flat arched doorway situated to its south. A third doorway with a Tudor head is situated beneath the southernmost window.

The southern chapel wall is situated at the north eastern end of the hall wall and is considerably lower. The chapel wall is orientated east to west for approximately 5m with an arched doorway below a trefoil headed single light window and a second partially blocked window.

The hall was erected in 1320 by Prior Wulstan de Bransford for the entertainment and accommodation of guests and pilgrims. After the destruction of the hall in 1864, the wooden roof was re-erected at the Holy Trinity Church. {11}

Sources and further reading

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