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Monument Types

• REFECTORY (MEDIEVAL - 1066 AD to 1539 AD)
• UNDERCROFT (MEDIEVAL - 1066 AD to 1539 AD)

Associated Events

• College Hall undercroft (Ref: WCM100027)
• Worcester Cathedral: Excavation, College Hall steps (Ref: WCM100297)
• Worcester Cathedral: College Hall undercroft (Ref: WCM100318)
• Worcester Cathedral: College Hall undercroft (Ref: WCM100319)
• Burials, College Hall Undercroft (Ref: WCM100946)
• Building recording, College Hall Undercroft (Ref: WCM101069)
• College Hall undercroft refurbishment (Ref: WCM102056)
• College Hall Undercroft (Ref: WCM102358)
• College Hall: stonework condition survey (Ref: WCM102361)
• Cathedral Undercroft Learning Centre, Heritage, Design and Access Statement (Ref: WCM102768)
• GPR survey, cloister garth, Worcester Cathedral (Ref: WCM102354)

Protected Status

• Listed Building
• Scheduled Monument

Full description

COLLEGE GREEN (North side) King's School Hall Also known as: College Hall COLLEGE GREEN.
SO85SW
620-1/3/170
22/05/54
GV
I

The monastic refectory, now school hall.

Mainly c1076-99 possibly with C10 origins, the upper part is c1476-99 incorporating Christ in Majesty c1220-30, and with C19 restorations including rainwaterheads dated 1886, and C20 gate. Coursed sandstone with slate roof; 2 external stone stacks to north wall; cast-iron gate and rainwaterheads. Rectangular on plan with lean-to extension to west. Early Norman undercroft surmounted by hall. 5 bays. South side: chamfered plinth; end off-set buttresses to 3/4 height; pilaster buttresses to upper stage roll-moulded sill band. End entrances: that to west a C19 creation which has flight of steps to double plank doors with decorated hinges in double-chamfered surround with roll- and hollow-moulding and face stops. To right a round-arched entrance with 5 orders of arches on 4 slender columns with eroded capitals, some recut, the inner order on plain responds; arches have double roll, roll-moulding with carved embellishment, roll and ball flower, a double roll moulding and a single order of roll-moulding (restored); hoodmould; within an ornate cast-iron gate. Entrances to undercroft: 7 round-arched openings (one blocked) mainly with plank doors, one glazed; to west are two straight-headed openings, continuous roll-moulded impost band rising as continuous hoodmoulds over round-arched openings. Upper stage has five 3-light windows with reticulated tracery to heads. North side has 5 similar windows, the second from east end contained reading pulpit and projects on chamfered base with roll moulding. To north-west angle an octagonal stair turret. Continuous cornice and parapet with chamfered copings. Entrance to right a pointed plank door in surround with double-chamfered arch with three then two orders of roll moulding and hoodmould with foliate decoration and three small animals, winged lion stops. Further entrance to left. There is evidence of two arches to this wall. East end has straight-headed 5-light window with reticulated tracery to head in arched recess with one order of roll-moulding and hoodmould with face stops, moulded sill. Winged eagle to coped gable end. West end has 7-light window with reticulated tracery.

INTERIOR: east wall of hall has defaced over-life-size Christ in Majesty in an elongated quatrefoil surrounded by the Signs of the Evangelists; friezes below, with heads and beasts, and above; thinly-vaulted niches to left and right. Windows have single order of fluted columns and triple-chamfered arch to head with ovolo-moulding. Hoodmoulds with head stops. Columnettes with bosses support renewed timber ceiling with ribs. The reading pulpit was on the north side and its window bay is articulated by a tiny rib-vault with an angel boss. The undercroft is sub-divided. At western end has two and a half squat pillars with plain caps, the westernmost becomes rectangular on west side, further rectangular pier; scalloped capitals to responds; groined vaulting. The eastern end has barrel vaults. Windows have deep, chamfered reveals. At eastern end to ground floor a barrel-vaulted passage leads to cloister and has low, cambered-arched plank door with roll-moulded surround giving access to undercroft; pointed plank door with Perpendicular-type traceried decoration in taller, round-arched surround with hoodmould gives access to cloister.

The north side of the hall is incorporated into the cloister of Worcester Cathedral (qv).

All the listed buildings in College Green are part of a significant group forming the setting for Worcester Cathedral (qv) to the north side. Scheduled Ancient Monument.
(The Buildings of England: Pevsner: N: Worcestershire: Harmondsworth: 1968-1985: 307) {1}.

Willis (1863) commented only briefly on the refectory, noting the basics of the undercroft with its groined vaults of 'early Norman rough construction' supported on a row of central columns with circular abacii, and lit by the series of round-headed windows in the buttressed bays of the lower part of the south wall. The refectory undercroft was, he suggested, assigned to the cellarer in the medieval priory {2}. See WCM 96382 for alleged passages between the undercroft and the monastic kitchen.

Philip Barker provides further observations on the refectory and its chronology. Originally 'a Norman first-floor hall of great size', of which the undercroft survives intact, he noted that the three central piers of the undercroft were of different character to those at each end, suggesting that the central bays had a distinct function. He further noted the great thickness of the north wall, with two large blocked Norman arches and buttresses of two sizes. There has been extensive remodelling around the doorway through the north wall into the undercroft. The south doorway from College Green is demonstrably inserted, an excavation there in 1992 (WCM 100297) showing that it partly blocks a Norman window. There may have been a smaller doorway at hall level, perhaps reached by external wooden steps, to give access to the kitchen. The drastic remodelling of the superstructure down to undercroft level in the 14th century cannot be easily explained unless, he suggested, either more of the Norman superstructure survives than has been generally supposed, or that the predecessor had been timber framed, perhaps with stone gable walls. Inside the east gable wall are the mutilated remains of a Christ-in-Majesty surrounded by symbols of the Evangelists. This can be dated to c.1220-1230 (contemporary with the rebuilding of the east end of the cathedral) with 14th-century friezes above and below {3}.

Barker's analysis of the undercroft (WCM 100318, 100319) suggested a more complex chronology there. He began by noting, first, the five-degree difference in the orientation of the undercroft to the rest of Wulfstan's buildings, suggesting that this may reflect the constraining influence of surviving earlier buildings, and second, the differences in thickness and alignment seen in the undercroft walls. In detail, he noted differences from bay to bay in the construction and mortar matrix of the vaults, the general resemblance of the vaults to those of the cathedral crypt, the fact that the groins rest on trumpet-scallop shaped capitals of late 12th century type, and the thickening of the east end of the south wall, apparently to take the thrust of the vaults. He suggested that the vaulted ceiling and central columns were an introduction of the late 12th century into an earlier shell. The west end of the undercroft had square piers rather than round ones and appears to have had a partition dividing it from the central space. Its western wall is heavily weathered on the inside face, suggesting either its construction with re-used materials, or its survival from an earlier structure; the great thickness of the wall here (with a tunnel, now blocked, hacked through it) he suggested supported the latter proposition (but see below). There is also evidence of a lowering of the undercroft floor, possibly contemporary with the introduction of the vaulting, to replace a putative timber ceiling. The plane of the north wall in the north-west corner was also noted to be out of alignment with the remainder, again, Barker suggested, possibly derived from the incorporation of an earlier structure into the building. At the east end, misalignments in the passage walls were interpreted in the same way, supported by the apparent insertion of the segmental-arched Norman undercroft doorway into earlier fabric. Barker also suggested that elements in the external face of the north wall (south cloister walk) were pre-Conquest survivals, based on relationships with what he took to be Norman buttresses.

In a postscript to his analysis, Barker included the results of consultations with Warwick Rodwell and Richard Gem. His analysis of the north wall sequence was revised following re-interpretation of the east end of the wall as part of the 14th-century fabric, with the buttresses part of the support for the refectory reader's pulpit and fabric pre-dating the buttresses as being most probably Norman. Gem also suggested that the bases of the south wall buttresses are late 12th century, so bringing forward the whole chronology of the building and suggesting that there was a century gap between the building of the cloisters and the refectory and its undercroft. Barker maintained however that the Norman undercroft doorway from the passage at the east end was inserted into earlier (early Norman or earlier) fabric. Rodwell supported the contention of the insertion of the vaulting into an earlier strucure with consequent lowering of the internal floor level; the weathering of the masonry at the west end of the undercroft was however felt to be the result of re-use rather than incorporation of an earlier building {4}. Barker's 1997 Research Design for the precinct characterised the refectory as 'the most complex and least understood building in the precinct' {5}.

Two sub-Roman or post-Roman east-west burials were excavated at a depth of 'barely 5cm' below the undercroft floor in 1970 (WCM 100027; WCM 96621), the circumstances of the burials suggesting high status interments, possibly close to or actually in a church, with the ground surface subsequently cut down for the building and/or subsequently lowering of the undercroft. 22 further burials were subsequently excavated under the eastern passage and in the open ground to the east of the refectory (WCM 100267; South Passage, WCM 100768; lawn, WCM 100769) showing that at least that end of the building encroached onto the pre-Conquest monastic cemetery (WCM 96370). Further excavations beneath the undercroft in June 1970 (WCM 100344) found a large pit backfilled with medieval and post-medieval rubble, including a fragment of painted sculpture dated to c.1200. The pit itself contained material as late as c.1700 and may have been associated with a phase of repair to the undercroft vault; it was cut into natural sand and gravel subsoil and sealed only by recent floor levels. Another excavation (WCM 100946, Carver 14/34) took place in 1969 somewhere in or even near the undercroft 'in an area belonging to the King's School' and 'produced the remains of several early burials'; no further details are recorded othr than these, given by Clarke {6}

The First edition OS map shows the building in use as a grammar school' {7}.

Cross-reference to: 96366, 14 College Green

Sources and further reading

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