Chethams Hospital And Attached Wall

Chetham's Hospital and Attached Wall

Manchester

This Grade I listed building on Long Millgate began as the College of the Collegiate Parish Church of Manchester, established in 1422 by Thomas de la Warre. After the Dissolution in 1547, it was converted into a town house by the Earl of Derby. During the Commonwealth it was sequestrated, but in 1654 Humphrey Chetham's executors purchased it and adapted it as a charity school (known as a "hospital") with an associated library. The building was substantially restored and enlarged between 1883 and 1895 by Oliver Heywood and Charles James Heywood.

The structure is built of coursed squared red sandstone with some dressings of grey gritstone (probably 19th century) and stone slate roofs. It comprises a small cloistered quadrangle with former Fellows' sets in the north, south and west ranges, a Great Hall and former Warden's rooms in the east range, and a long east wing extending from the north range containing former kitchen, hospitium, and bakehouse, with a short returned end linked to a gatehouse. A 19th-century parallel addition extends to the rear of this wing. The architectural style is Perpendicular, featuring 4-centred arched openings and foiled lights throughout.

The building is principally two storeys, though the Great Hall and kitchen rise open to full height. A basement exists beneath the north range.

The Great Hall contains three large cross-windows at high level with cinquefoil cusped lights, a low 2-light "dole" window at the dais end, and an added 2-storey porch at the north end covering the doorways to the screens passage and kitchen. This porch has 2-light windows on both floors and a small cusped niche in the gable with crocketed canopy on mask corbels.

The solar end of the hall range (now the Audit Room with Reading Room above) is 2 storeys and 3 bays, featuring a projecting and gabled centre with a drip-band between floors and a crocketed niche in the apex. Ground-floor windows are 2-light; first-floor windows are 2-, 3-, and 2-light. A small octagonal chimney stands at the junction of hall and solar, with a separate gable chimney. The south gable has 4-centred arched 2-light windows forward of the chimney and square-headed mullioned windows to the rear.

The south range projects and has a moulded 4-centred arched doorway offset to the left, small square-headed mullioned windows of 2, 1 and 2 cusped lights at ground floor, and six large 17th-century 3-light mullioned windows at first floor.

Attached to the south-west corner of this range is part of the original boundary wall of the site, approximately 2 metres high on the inner side, with pitched coping.

Within the quadrangle, the 2-storey 6-bay west cloister has buttresses, 3-light windows at ground floor (the second with an inserted doorway) and 2-light windows in alternate bays at first floor. The 3-bay north and south cloisters are similar, except that a 17th-century stair-turret in the north-east corner replaces the third bay of the north cloister. The west side of the hall has a rebuilt skewed polygonal inglenook, together with an oriel window and staircase contiguous to the right.

The long east wing, to the right of the porch, has double drip-bands between floors. Its windows are coupled at ground floor of the kitchen and tripled above, all of 2 cusped lights except at first-floor left where the porch covers the first light (visible internally). Ground-floor windows have hoodmoulds. The continuation to the right has six 2-light windows at first floor with trefoil lights; ground-floor openings are arranged window-doorway-doorway-window-window-doorway-window-window-doorway, all with hoodmoulds. The first doorway opens onto a passage running through to a platform at the rear. (These openings do not match those shown in the Victoria County History plan; the grey gritstone surrounds differ from those of some unaltered windows at the rear, suggesting that most are restored and some probably altered as well—for instance, the first window to the right of the kitchen shows the rebate of a former doorway internally.) The roof has a small bellcote and two octagonal chimneys.

The 2-bay return at the east end, canted back slightly, has a moulded drip-band at a lower level than the bands of the main range, two 3-light windows at ground floor and one above, and an external dog-legged stone staircase ascending the gable wall around the south corner to a doorway at first floor of the gatehouse.

The gatehouse is 2-storeyed and steeply gabled, with a moulded 4-centred archway through the ground floor, a small inserted or altered window above and a 4-centred arched doorway to its left. Its outer face is an early 19th-century rebuild featuring an oriel window at first floor.

The rear of the east wing includes a massive external chimney stack to the kitchen (inscribed "Rebuilt 1902"), a corbelled garderobe, and a stone platform to the rear of the through-passage.

Interior

The building features cavetto-moulded beams and collar-rafter roofs with arch-braced principals and superimposed collar purlins throughout. The Great Hall has a very large dais canopy at the south end with brattished cornice, a massive altered inglenook fireplace in the west wall, and tripartite oak screens at the north end with moulded rails and brattished tops. The screens passage contains coupled 2-centred arched service doorways. The cloisters have similar doorways to the former Fellows' sets, some coupled.

The stair-turret off the north cloister contains a splat-baluster staircase. The Audit Room is finished with muntin-and-rail panelling, a moulded plaster floriated frieze, and beams with carved bosses. The Reading Room has similar panelling, a cavetto-moulded wall-plate with portcullis and eagle's claw emblems of the Derby family, and a very large elaborate tympanum including a carved cartouche with helm and mantling and cockerell. A segmental-vaulted ceiling (inserted before 1654) was added.

The kitchen (now the Music Library) has a fireplace approximately 7 metres wide with a horizontal lintel of joggled blocks beneath a segmental arch approximately 4 metres high. The east wall contains a smaller opening with a similar joggled lintel beneath a 2-centred arch, probably also a fireplace. Rooms to the east of the passage have low 2-centred arches in their transverse walls.