St Catherine's Hill and part of Winchester College, looking southeast from the tower of Winchester Cathedral. Chapel and its tower are in the centre, with the buildings of Chamber Court and Outer Court below them; the Warden's Lodging is partly masked by trees on the left, while the Headmaster's House is on the right. St Catherine's Hill, owned by the school, is in the background.
Winchester College is an English independent boarding school for pupils aged 13 to 18. Its original medieval buildings from the 1382 foundation remain largely intact, but they have been supplemented by multiple episodes of construction. Additions were made in the medieval and early modern periods. There was a major expansion of boarding accommodation in the Victorian era; further teaching areas were constructed at the turn of the 20th century and more recently.
Sketch map of Winchester College, with clickable links, showing the major buildings and its position relative to the city, the cathedral, and St Catherine's Hill. All locations and building outlines are diagrammatic.
Winchester College was founded by William of Wykeham in 1382. He was a wealthy and powerful figure, as he was both Bishop of Winchester and Chancellor of England. The foundation was for a school to enable 70 boys, sons of poor clergymen, to have a free education; they might go on to have a university education the school's sister foundation, New College, Oxford.[1] The first 70 poor scholars entered the school in 1394. The school still has 70 scholars, and they are still housed in the medieval buildings. The scholars have been joined by a larger number of other pupils, known as commoners, housed in Victorian era boarding houses.[1]
The foundation buildings are situated just south of Winchester's Cathedral Close and bordering a branch of the River Itchen. These have been supplemented by several later buildings. There are teaching buildings near the foundation, including the 17th-century School and the 19th-century Flint Court. Further to the south are the 19th century Museum, intended as a teaching space for arts and sciences, and the 20th century Science School. To the west of Kingsgate Street is a cluster of ten mainly 19th-century boarding houses for the commoners. Other buildings including the War Cloister, the Sanatorium, and the Southern Campus for sports, lie to the southwest of the foundation buildings. The school is set in extensive grounds to the south, including the Meads playing fields, water meadows by the river, and St Catherine's Hill to the southeast.[2] Several are listed buildings;[lower-alpha 1][lower-alpha 2] there are 18 Grade I, 6 Grade II* and over 70 Grade II listings,[4] including many of the houses on both sides of Kingsgate Street, and some further south on Kingsgate Road.[3] The medieval core buildings have been described as "all ... of rare significance".[5] The joint foundation with New College represents a religious, educational, and architectural endowment with "no obvious European precedent"; in 1441, King Henry VI followed the example to create the matching pair of Eton College and King's College, Cambridge.[6]
The medieval foundation
Plan of the school's medieval and Early Modern buildings. Outer Court, Chamber Court, Chapel, and Cloisters are 14th century; (Fromond's) Chantry is 15th century; School is 17th century.
The medieval buildings, representing most of the original foundation from the school's opening in 1394, include Outer Gate and Outer Court, Chamber Court, the Chapel, and the Cloisters. Most are built using flint with limestone facings and slate roofs;[7][4] the Chapel is mostly in "green Ventnor stone".[8] The buildings were designed in the Perpendicular Gothic style of the English late medieval period by William Wynford, the master mason who designed New College, Oxford.[9] The two teaching institutions were the first in England to have layouts planned on a large scale. Outer Gate has a handsome star-shaped lierne vault, described by the architectural historian Nikolaus Pevsner as "out-of-the-ordinary", such decoration usually being confined to churches.[10] Outer Court is mainly medieval, but the east side is formed by the architect G. S. Repton's 1832–1833 reworking of the Warden's Lodgings in knapped flint laid in regular courses. The west side was once extended, but is now closed by a screen with a 1663 archway. Doors lead to the former stables, brewhouse and slaughterhouse; the architect Herbert Baker transformed the brewhouse into the Moberly Library in 1932–1934.[11] The Cloisters have Italianate wagon roofs and bare external walls; the inside walls have gothic arched openings, each divided into three lights. The structure is at an angle to the rest of the medieval buildings to fit the shape of the site.[8]
The south side of Chamber Court is formed by the chapel of St. Mary, known simply as "Chapel". It retains its original wooden fan-vaulted ceiling, designed by Hugh Herland, carpenter to Richard II.[12] The college's dining hall, known as "Hall", is housed in the same range of buildings in ashlar stonework, on the first floor to the west of Chapel. Hall has wooden panelling, installed in 1540.[13][14] The four-stage tower, visible from all around the college, was demolished and rebuilt in 1862–1863.[13]
The chapel is known for its stained glass. The East window depicts the Tree of Jesse. Down the chapel's north and south sides is a collection of saints. Little of the original medieval glass, designed by Thomas Glazier, survives. A firm of glaziers in Shrewsbury, Betton and Evans, was tasked with cleaning the glass in the 1820s. At that time there was no known process for cleaning the badly deteriorated glass and so it was copied, while most of the original glass was scattered or destroyed.[12][15] Some pieces have been recovered. The art historian and Old Wykehamist, Kenneth Clark, bought back the Tree of Jesse section of the east window, now housed in Thurburn's Chantry (1473–1485), at the back of the chapel. Further figures have been returned; they form the east window of Fromond's Chantry, inside the Cloisters.[12][15] The pews, choir stalls, and panelling inside the chapel were designed by the ecclesiastical architect W. D. Caröe and made between 1913 and 1921, while the stall ends and misericords are from the medieval foundation.[16]
Chamber Court, 1394, looking through Middle Gate to Outer Court and Outer Gate
Chapel ceiling
North side of Chapel, facing Chamber Court
Medieval to early modern
Later buildings include Fromond's Chantry, built inside the Cloisters after 1420.[13] The Warden's Lodgings is constructed largely of red brick; the oldest parts were built in 1597. The face North on to College Street has its lower part in flint with stone buttresses, the upper part with lightly-arched windows dated to 1730. A chimneypiece in the house is dated 1615.[10]
In the early modern period, the College Sick House was built by the school's warden (chairman of governors) John Harris in 1656–1657.[17] Harris named it Bethesda after the biblical Pool of Bethesda, a place of healing, and had the name "בת'סדה" ("Bethesda, house of mercy"[18]) inscribed in Hebrew above the door.[2] It now serves as a staff common room.[19] It is constructed mainly of brick with mullioned windows; the front has two large gables, flanking a smaller central gable that projects forward, housing the door.[13]
Warden Nicholas extended and adapted buildings around the College. He had Chapel decorated with fine oak panelling in 1680–1683.[20] Soon afterwards, in 1683–1687, he had the building called "School" constructed in the English baroque Wren style.[4] Above the door is a 1692 statue of the college's founder William of Wykeham, by the Danish sculptor C. G. Cibber. The building is of red brick with stone facings, carved modillions, and a hipped roof. The front has seven bays, of which the central three are under a large triangular pediment. Pevsner notes the "very fine" stone garlands above the arched windows.[13] That same year, Nicholas had the East face of the Warden's Lodgings (looking on to the Warden's gardens and the River Itchen) reworked.[10]
View from the Northeast (College Street): Fromond's Chantry (inside Cloisters) on left, then Chapel, outside of Chamber Court, and (in red brick) the Warden's Lodgings.
Bethesda, by John Harris, 1656–1657
The building called "School" in Wren style, 1683–1687
'Meads' walled cricket pitch
Warden Nicholas's oak panelling for Chapel, 1680–1683 (removed 1874, in New Hall from 1961)
Panels with floral decoration
Doorway
Window
Victorian
The school was greatly extended in the 19th century during Queen Victoria's reign, with the addition of boarding houses for "commoners", paying pupils, as opposed to the scholars who continued to live in the medieval College. The first two were Chernocke House and Moberly's, which began as private houses owned by teachers. The third, Du Boulay's, was built speculatively by the Reverend James Du Boulay, borrowing money against the hope of future paying boarders. In 1869, six more boarding houses were added, four of them built speculatively under the headmaster George Ridding. The original and surviving sports field was the walled area of Meads, just behind School; other fields were added in the 19th century on both sides of the River Itchen.[21]
The "forbidding" neo-Gothic Headmaster's House (no longer used for that purpose), its front in knapped and squared flint, the back in Georgian-style red brick, was built by the English architect G. S. Repton in 1839–1842.[13] Just to the south of the Headmaster's House are Flint Court and Moberly Court, designed by the Gothic Revival architect William Butterfield, and built between 1867 and 1870.[13] Flint Court, providing many of the school's classrooms and the teachers' common room, is open at the front; the wings to left and right are of 3 storeys, in red brick, described by Pevsner as "partly chequer, partly diaper"; the centre has a single-storey Perpendicular-style cloister in front of the full-height range.[13]
In the 1880s, a large Sanatorium, designed by the English architect William White, was built in High Victorian Baronial style in 1884–1893; it has been described as "an all too prominent feature"[22] of the school's landscape.[13] It is now used as the college's art school.[4]
For the school's 500th anniversary, the handsome but impractical Brunelleschi-style building called "Museum" (formally named "Memorial Buildings") by Basil Champneys, intended to support all the arts and sciences, was opened in 1897.[23]Nikolaus Pevsner described it as "curiously Baroque", but "personal, bold, and successful [visually]".[24] The building is in brick and Bath stone, arranged in nine bays with columns; the windows are flanked by prominent stone blocks projecting from and alternating with brickwork. The first and last bays are solid, with statues of William of Wykeham and of Queen Victoria. The building has a loggia with two rows of Tuscan-style columns, forming part of the ground floor.[24]
The Music School, designed by the arts and crafts architect E. S. Prior, was added in 1903–1904. The octagonal building is in flint and greenstone, with large round-topped gables fronting a pyramidal roof, and a large round hood over the doorway. Pevsner comments that it is a "composition of strange elements indeed."[26] It was extended in the 21st century with a mixture of yellow brick, limestone dressings, glass, and zinc cladding.[13]
The Science School was designed by the English architect Henry L. G. Hill, who served as the college archivist. It is in what the college calls Queen Anne revival style, and was completed in 1904; it remains in use for its original purpose.[4][27] The building is of thirteen bays in red brick, dressed with white Portland stone. Historic England calls the style "richly decorated ... [Edwardian] Wrenaissance".[28] Pevsner describes the building as "badly organized and detailed."[24] The hipped roofs are covered with slate, above a cornice with modillion eaves. An extension was designed by the architect[29] T. D. Atkinson around 1930.[28] The separate Biology Block behind the Science School was added by the architect and college bursar[30] Ruthven O. Hall in 1958; Pevsner calls it "dull and utilitarian".[24]
To the west of Meads, the college's War Cloister serves as a memorial to the Wykehamist dead of the two World Wars. It was designed by Herbert Baker, architect of many colonial buildings in South Africa and New Delhi, and dedicated in 1924. It is a listed building.[31] A bronze bust of Old Boy Air Chief Marshal Lord Dowding sits on the west side of the cloister.[31] The College's South Africa Gate on Kingsgate Street commemorates the Wykehamist dead of the 1899–1902 Boer War. It leads to the War Cloister.[32] Another older war memorial in the school is the entry chamber to Chapel. Known as "Crimea" after the Crimean War of 1853–1856, it bears the names of Wykehamists who died at the siege of Sebastopol.[33]
A hall big enough for the enlarged school, New Hall, was opened in 1961, just east of the Mill Leat, a branch of the River Itchen. Its design was constrained by the need to accommodate the oak panelling which had been taken out of Chapel in that building's "disastrous"[20] internal redesign of 1874. The interior of New Hall with Warden Nicholas's 1680–1683 panelling has been called "a triumph".[20] Pevsner comments that the architect, Peter Shepheard, "lost his nerve" and chose to be "above all tactful" rather than making the hall modern; he calls the resulting exterior in "blue" brick with stone facings "not self-effacing ... [but] very noticeable, only in a pleadingly inoffensive way."[34]
The development of a "Southern Campus" comprising a PE centre, swimming pool, rifle range, and squash courts by the architects Design Engine began in 2017 on the site between the Kingsgate Park sports field and the Norman Road tennis courts. The "complex geometry of the roof forms" is intended to reference the silhouette of the college's historic buildings, while the sports centre's grey brick and the other buildings' red brick is meant to reflect the tones of the medieval flint and brick. The "substantial" buildings are designed to be "largely hidden" from outside the college.[35]
Winchester College is a public school with some provision for day pupils, in Winchester, Hampshire, England. It was founded by William of Wykeham in 1382 as a feeder school for New College, Oxford, and has existed in its present location ever since. It is the oldest of the nine schools considered by the Clarendon Commission. The school has begun a transition to become co-educational, and has accepted male and female day pupils from September 2022, having previously been a boys' boarding school for over 600 years.
New College is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom. Founded in 1379 by William of Wykeham in conjunction with Winchester College as its feeder school, New College was one of the first colleges in the university to admit and tutor undergraduate students.
Winchester College Notions are the specialised terms, and sometimes customs, that have been used by pupils, known as men, at Winchester College. Some are specific to the school; others are survivals of slang or dialect that were once in wider usage. Notions tests were formerly held in each house of the school, and numerous manuscript and printed books were written to collect notions for pupils to learn. Some notions were customs, such as the Morning Hills assembly held on top of St. Catherine's Hill; others were humorous, like the Pempe, a practical joke played on new pupils. Most notions have now fallen into disuse.
A fan vault is a form of vault used in the Gothic style, in which the ribs are all of the same curve and spaced equidistantly, in a manner resembling a fan. The initiation and propagation of this design element is strongly associated with England.
Henry Yevele (c. 1320 – 1400) was an English mason. He was considered to be the most prolific and successful master mason active in late medieval England. The first document relating to him is dated 3 December 1353, when he purchased the freedom of London. In February 1356 he was sufficiently well known as a mason that he was chosen as one of a commission of six cutting masons who were to inform the mayor and aldermen about the acts and articles of the craft.
Tudor Revival architecture, also known as mock Tudor in the UK, first manifested in domestic architecture in the United Kingdom in the latter half of the 19th century. Based on revival of aspects that were perceived as Tudor architecture, in reality it usually took the style of English vernacular architecture of the Middle Ages that had survived into the Tudor period.
Itchen Abbas is a village and former civil parish, now in the parish of Itchen Valley, in the Winchester district, in the county of Hampshire, England. The village is on the River Itchen about 4 miles (6.4 km) north-east of Winchester.
Home Place, also called Voewood, is an Arts and Crafts style house in High Kelling, near Holt, Norfolk, England, designed (1903–5) by Edward Schroeder Prior. It is a Grade II* listed building. The gardens, also designed by Prior, are Grade II* listed in the National Register of Historic Parks and Gardens.
William Wynford or William of Wynford was one of the most successful English master masons of the 14th century, using the new Perpendicular Gothic style.
Charles Francis Hansom was a prominent Roman Catholic Victorian architect who primarily designed in the Gothic Revival style.
English Gothic is an architectural style that flourished from the late 12th until the mid-17th century. The style was most prominently used in the construction of cathedrals and churches. Gothic architecture's defining features are pointed arches, rib vaults, buttresses, and extensive use of stained glass. Combined, these features allowed the creation of buildings of unprecedented height and grandeur, filled with light from large stained glass windows. Important examples include Westminster Abbey, Canterbury Cathedral and Salisbury Cathedral. The Gothic style endured in England much longer than in Continental Europe.
Close studding is a form of timber work used in timber-framed buildings in which vertical timbers (studs) are set close together, dividing the wall into narrow panels. Rather than being a structural feature, the primary aim of close studding is to produce an impressive front.
Selborne Priory was a priory of Augustinian canons in Selborne, Hampshire, England.
Henry Clutton was an English architect and designer.
James Essex (1722–1784) was an English builder and architect who mostly worked in Cambridge, where he was born. He designed portions of many colleges of the University of Cambridge, and carried out major restorations of the cathedrals at Ely and Lincoln. He was an admirer of Gothic architecture, and assembled materials for a history of the style, though the book remained unpublished.
Trinity Congregational Church, later known as Union Chapel, is a former place of worship for Congregationalists and Independent Christians in Arundel, an ancient town in the Arun district of West Sussex, England. Protestant Nonconformism has always been strong in the town, and the chapel's founding congregation emerged in the 1780s. After worshipping elsewhere in the town, they founded the present building in the 1830s and remained for many years. Former pastors included the poet George MacDonald. Robert Abraham's distinctive neo-Norman/Romanesque Revival building was converted into a market in the 1980s and has been renamed Nineveh House. The church is a Grade II Listed building.
Charles Bell FRIBA (1846–99) was a British architect who designed buildings in the United Kingdom, including over 60 Wesleyan Methodist chapels.
Percy Richard Morley Horder was an English architect who early in his career worked from offices in Stroud and later in London. His early work was in the Arts and Crafts style, but after the First World War his buildings were increasingly in the Neo-Georgian fashion. His work included public houses for the Godsell Brewery and designing new country houses or partially rebuilding existing houses. He also designed country-house gardens and is noted for laying out Highfields Park, Nottingham together with the adjacent Nottingham University Campus. He undertook architectural work in many parts of the British Isles including Ireland. He is probably best remembered for the Trent Building in the University of Nottingham. and for design of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. His work at Upton House, Warwickshire for Viscount Bearsted is notable, but it is his work for Jesse Boot, both the Boots the Chemists stores, but most importantly the Trent Building and the laying out the campuses of the University of Nottingham, which influenced design at other English universities, for which he must take the greatest credit.
The Winchester College War Cloister is a war memorial at Winchester College, in Hampshire, designed by the architect Sir Herbert Baker. The roofed quadrangle is said by Historic England to be the largest known private war memorial in Europe. It became a Grade II listed building in 1950, and was upgraded to Grade I in 2017, as one of 24 war memorials in England designed by Baker that were designated by Historic England as a national collection.
Perpendicular Gothic architecture was the third and final style of English Gothic architecture developed in the Kingdom of England during the Late Middle Ages, typified by large windows, four-centred arches, straight vertical and horizontal lines in the tracery, and regular arch-topped rectangular panelling. Perpendicular was the prevailing style of Late Gothic architecture in England from the 14th century to the 17th century. Perpendicular was unique to the country: no equivalent arose in Continental Europe or elsewhere in the British Isles. Of all the Gothic architectural styles, Perpendicular was the first to experience a second wave of popularity from the 18th century on in Gothic Revival architecture.
1 2 Page, William, ed. (1912). "Winchester: St Mary's College". A History of the County of Hampshire. Vol.5. London: Victoria County History. pp.14–19. Retrieved 3 November 2022– via British History Online.
↑ "TD Atkinson, architect". The National Archives. Retrieved 24 January 2023. Reference 9M49: Further information NRA 25412
↑ Vaivre, Jean-Bernard de (1974). "Artus, les trois couronnes et les héraults". Archives héraldiques suisses: Annuaire (in French). 88: 13. qu'a bien voulu me faire tenir M. Ruthven O. Hall, bursar de Winchester College
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