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Monument Types

• WALL (Constructed ?18th century, 18TH CENTURY AD to 21ST CENTURY AD - 1701 AD to 2050 AD)

Protected Status

• Listed Building

Full description

COLLEGE GREEN (South side) No.9
and attached wall to left at rear.
SO85SW
620-1/3/162
22/05/54
(Formerly Listed as: COLLEGE GREEN (South side) No.9}
GV II*

House and attached wall.

Late C16 or early C17, with rebuilding of mid C18 and later additions and alterations including restorations c1970-90. Timber frame with facades of pinkish-red brick in Flemish bond with plain tile double pitch roof and 2 left end brick stacks, side stack to front at right and rear stack; all with oversailing course and pots. Pinkish-brown brick wall with purple brick copings.

PLAN: unusual plan, with three parallel ranges comprising kitchen to S, central service room and largest range to N. C18 -early C19 extensions along W elevation, including former stair tower to W of N wing.

Exterior: N elevation refronted in brick in late C18. 3 storeys with attic in gable at rear, 3 first floor windows. Timber framing: exposed post to SE. Front facade: plinth. 6/6 sashes in near flush frames with flat arches of gauged brick throughout. 3-course first and second floor bands and moulded eaves band. Entrance at right: 4 raised and fielded panel door with fluted frieze, divided overlight with margin lights in porch with slender octagonal pilasters, frieze and cornice. Rear: first floor has canted bay with 10/10 between 6/6 sashes; second floor has two 6/6 sashes; attic has 6/6 fixed light.

INTERIOR: cyma and ovolo moulded beams to ground and first floors, with early sawn floorboards and some late C16/C17 doors; the kitchen has large open fireplace with chamfered bressumer. The central service room has remarkably rare and fine example of service screen: upper row of cupboards, with mullioned door and panelled doors with decorative piercing; cupboard door to left of ribbed plank door to cellar. Transverse beam, former partition wall, marks position of service passage from kitchen to W range. Fine late C17 staircase, with pulvinated and turned balusters, relating to contemporary cross windows in stair turret but not to former newel stair, which rises within the body of the C16/early house to the attic. The hall, clearly the result of late C18 reworking, has late C17 bolection moulded panels to dado.

SUBSIDIARY FEATURES: wall L-plan, curved to angle with brick buttresses, approximately 2 metres high and 30 metres long.

HISTORICAL NOTE: known in the C17 as The Organist's House. From 1784 Widow Cowe lived here, followed by Mary Isaac, Revd Charles Yardley, Miss Susan Shapland (from c1821), Mary Shapland from 1850. In 1881 DW Sampson, the second master of King's School lived here. Knowles notes that the whole of the south side of College Green had been service buildings to the medieval monastery. A complex multi-phase house.

All the listed buildings in College Green are part of a significant group forming the setting for Worcester Cathedral (qv) to the north side.
(The Buildings of England: Pevsner N: Worcestershire: Harmondsworth: 1968-1985: 316; Knowles JM: College Green: Worcester 1800-1900: Worcester: 1995-: 22-3) {1}.



The building was partially recorded in 1998 (WCM 101063). The brick frontage conceals an early 17th-century timber-frame, intact apart from the removal of its north (front) wall. Originally of three and a half storeys (attics with gables) and three bays, the bays are of equal size in the upper floors, though the southern bay to the ground floor is enlarged, and from its large stone fireplace, was interpreted by the surveyor as a kitchen. There was a stair tower on the west elevation. The surviving two bays have transverse gables; the northern bay formerly had them. The roof is of butt-purlin construction. There is a stone cellar accessed from the central bay. The bottom two stages of the old stair tower were removed and a new stair block added in the 17th century immediately to the north of the old one (where some extension had already taken place). The front elevation and the roof of the northern bay were built in the early 18th century, cannibalising components from the old roof; the cambered tie beam from the old roof survives in the north wall. Further extensions were made later to the south west {2}.

The 17th-century house was built in 1640 by Thomas Tompkins, the organist, and was known as the Organist's House. Guy notes that the cellar is partly stone built (particularly in the north-east corner, though other cellarage walls are brick, or brick and stone {3}.

The rear elevation is on the line of the southern precinct wall (WCM 96356).

Sources and further reading

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