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Monument Types

• DORMITORY (MEDIEVAL - 1066 AD to 1539 AD)

Associated Events

• Worcester Cathedral: reredorter (Ref: WCM100268)
• Cathedral priory dorter (Ref: WCM100817)
• Cathedral priory dorter and reredorter (Ref: WCM100818)
• Trial excavation, dorter range (Ref: WCM101231)

Full description

The monastic dormitory range, now partly-standing ruins, extending west from the west side of the cloisters (WCM 96376).

One of the earliest conventual buildings, probably begun soon after the eastern arm of the cathedral church (WCM 96371) was finished in the late 11th century; its exterior walls are distinguished by masonry laid in alternating wide and narrow courses. The dorter was built over an undercroft or subvault measuring 123 x 63 ft (c.37.5 x 19m) of which part of the east wall survives, forming the west wall of the west cloister walk, together with fragments of the north and south walls; the west wall was largely rebuilt. The building was formerly roofed with a double-pitch lead roof, the valley between the pitches resting on a longitudinal spine wall. The undercroft or subvault was further divided laterally into 8 vaulted bays each side of the spine wall, the unribbed vaults springing from narrow pilasters with chamfered abaci and no bases. The subvault floor was 9 feet (c.2.75m) below cloister floor level. The original (blocked) entrance to the dorter survives in the west wall of the cloister, was altered/reduced in the 13th century, and replaced in the 15th by another door in the next cloister bay to the north, the staircase within the door going up to the north with a landing lit by two inserted windows from the cloister.

The dorter is recorded as having been rebuilt in 1375-7 under the supervision of the cellarer, Richard Wenlock. A new dormitory was built on the old subvault, fragments only of the long walls surviving. It retained the spine wall design of its predecessor in the form of a central longitudinal arcade. A room was also added over the infirmary passage (running between the north wall of the dorter and the cathedral south aisle) in the 14th century. A door into the infirmary passage from the subvault has stairs off in the thickness of the north wall, either up to the dorter or to the room over the passage.

At the time of the 1649 Parliamentary Survey the building still had its lead roof. One corner was occupied by a separate house. The subvault under had a passage known as Dark Alley that gave access to a number of two-storey dwellings. The range was ruined later in the Civil War when the lead and timber were stripped out. Prebendal houses on the site were demolished in the early 19th century, and the ruins further reduced after 1848.

The dorter range was the subject of excavations 'without much success' by Canon Wilson (WCM 100817; the site was then his garden). It was excavated again by Harold Brakspear in 1912 with Society of Antiquaries funding (WCM 100818). This excavation traced and exposed sections of east wall and the western part of the north wall.

Brakspear thought it unlikely that the whole of the subvault would have been used for the common house or warming room; this use, he suggested, would have been confined to the five eastern bays of the southern half of the subvault, with unlit cellarage to the north, and the bays to the west probably used as part of the infirmary establishment {1}.

Noake adds further details including a reference of 1302 to the collapse of 'a great part of the dormitory', and details of the prebendal housing on the site {2}.

Barker's 1997 cathedral research design mentions two further interventions on the site. A ground-probing radar survey (WCM 101230) failed to find any sign of the spine wall column bases but did suggest a drain running diagonally across the site from the cloister lavatorium towards the reredorter to the west. A trial excavation in 1988 (WCM 101231) in the eastern part of the undercroft found a considerable depth of soil backfill {3}.

[{5} (TO ADD reference to Lewis Sheppard's A-Sax wall paper in AASRP)]

scheduling records

Cross reference to: 96380, reredorter
Cross reference to: 96381, infirmary

Sources and further reading

Related records

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