Grays Court And Garden Gates And Piers Attached To South East Corner

Gray's Court and Garden Gates and Piers

A house of Grade I importance, now used as a higher education college, originally built as one of the Houses of the Treasurers of York Minster. The building incorporates fragments from 12th-century and 14th-century houses and underwent substantial development and alteration across three centuries.

The core structure dates from the early 18th century, when the Treasurer's House was subdivided and remodelled. A gallery range extension was added around 1742. Further significant work followed: in 1845–46, the architects J.B. and W. Atkinson undertook extension and alteration; around 1900, Temple Moore carried out extensive restoration and remodelling for members of the Gray family. A mid-18th-century extension was made for Dr Jacques Sterne.

Construction materials vary across the complex. The gallery range is built of red brick in various bonds, incorporating a colonnade of reused limestone columns that are now blocked with pink-grey brick. The limestone porch features a weatherboarded first floor. The wing has a ground floor of coursed magnesian limestone, buttressed in brick on the garden side, with the first floor constructed of red and orange-grey brick in English garden-wall bond on the courtyard side and orange brick in random bond facing the garden. A limestone ground floor extends across the end of the gallery range below a first floor of orange brick in English garden-wall bond. The mid-19th-century extension is of pink-grey brick in English garden-wall bond, and a cottage extension is in red brick. The gallery range extension towards Minster Yard is stuccoed. All roofs are slate with brick stacks. Timber guttering on block brackets runs along the garden side of the gallery range end bay, wing, and extension.

The entrance front presents a three-storey, six-bay gallery range with a three-storey, three-bay projecting wing to the right. The blocked colonnade of reused 12th-century columns forms a blind arcade of shallow four-centred arches, each containing a two-light Yorkshire sash beneath a flat brick arch. The centre bay features a two-storey projecting porch with a 19th-century battened panel door; the first floor is jettied over detached squat Doric columns and contains a gabled five-light casement window with centre lights rising into a round-arched head beneath a moulded cornice. First-floor windows flanking the porch are two-, three- and four-light timber mullioned and transomed casements with painted glass panes. Second-floor windows are 12-pane sashes, some retaining original glazing. A two-course raised brick band marks the second floor. Bold moulded timber eaves cornice runs the length of the front, discontinuing at the left end where the eaves rise to a half-shaped gable abutting the rear of Treasurer's House. The wing's centre bay is pedimented and projects forward. To its right is a glazed and panelled door beneath a flat porch, with a two-by-four-pane Yorkshire sash window with segmental brick arch on the first floor and a squat six-pane sash on the second floor. The left end bay has a two-by-six-pane casement window on the ground floor with blind storeys above. The centre bay has a segment-headed two-by-six-pane casement window on the ground floor and above it a two-storey canted oriel window with moulded and modillioned cornice and unequal sashes; the centre sash is round-arched with radial glazing in a moulded and keyed surround.

The gallery range extension towards Minster Yard comprises a basement and two storeys with a four-window front, the left part projecting. Steps to the right lead to a glazed and panelled front door in a doorcase with Corinthian columns, entablature and broken pediment bearing a bust in the tympanum. To the left is a basement door of six raised and fielded panels with a divided overlight; the basement contains three unequal six-pane sash windows elsewhere. Ground-floor windows are square latticed casements with timber mullions and transoms—four-lights to the left of the door and two lights further left. The first floor has two 16-pane sash windows with painted sills. Stone steps are fitted with plain railings and handrail.

The garden front displays a three-storey gallery end bay between dwarf buttresses, with a two-storey five-window wing to the left and a three-storey three-window bow front to the extension further right. A two-storey three-bay cottage extension stands at the far right. The entrance on the first floor of the gallery bay comprises glazed and panelled double doors with lozenge glazing bars, accessed by a flight of steps and sheltered by timber cornice and brick pediment. The second floor of the gallery bay has two unequal six-pane sash windows. A T-shaped staircase, bowed at landing level, features moulded steps and copings with a balustrade of stick railings and arabesque panels and a flat handrail swept out at the foot of both flights on shaped curtail steps. The wing to the left has two slit windows and a deeply recessed cross window inserted between reused moulded jambs and beneath a tooled lintel on the ground floor. First-floor windows are tall sashes, irregularly disposed. A moulded first-floor stone string continues as a two-course raised brick band. The extension features paired small 12-pane pivoting windows on the ground floor; on the first floor, three tall two-by-four-pane lights with wrought-iron window guards and continuous lintel and sill band; on the second floor, tripled 12-pane sashes with lintels and sills, all having vertically tooled examples. The cottage has a four-panel door with a narrow eight-pane sash to the left and a blocked window to the right; on the first floor are two 12-pane sashes, all with cambered brick arches and stone sills.

Interior features have not been fully inspected. In the gallery range ground floor, reused columns are cylindrical with original moulded bases, some restored. The inner wall of 12th-century masonry contains a single chamfered round-headed window and incorporates bands of chip-carved paterae. The hall is lined with square panelling, some original. The staircase to the first floor has a dado of raised panelling and newels carved in relief with fruit and floral drops. The first floor features a gallery lined with panelling as on the ground floor, two fireplaces and two broken pedimented doorcases with foliate friezes. The inner wall contains a window and carved bands as found on the ground floor, together with a corbel table at wall head. A bow-fronted room facing the garden has an elaborate fireplace with caryatid jambs, frieze of classical figures and a fine Art Nouveau grate. A room at the opposite end of the gallery is lined with reused 17th-century panelling; its fireplace has a four-centred head. In the wing ground floor, exposed moulded beams include one set diagonally. A staircase with close string and turned balusters rises to the first floor. The first-floor Sterne Room contains a carved doorcase with foliate frieze and dentilled cornice overdoor; skirting and window architraves are also carved. An ornate fireplace carved with fruit and flower swags and drops includes a portrait medallion of Princess Augusta; a coved ceiling panelled in plaster is enclosed in a guilloche surround.

Stained glass is present in the staircase window and long gallery, some probably by Henry Gyles; there is also a window by J.W. Knowles.

The garden gates and railings are of cast iron with sandstone ashlar piers, dating from 1902. The square-section gate piers, approximately four metres high, have sunk panel sides with low-relief swag in the head and moulded cornices enriched with egg-and-dart supporting demi-lions rampant. Railings are raised on a low stone wall with cambered coping; double gates are supported by cylindrical gate posts with ball finials. Railings and gate bars are of square section, with railings incorporating trefoil-headed panels.

The gate piers were originally removed from the Minster front of Treasurer's House by Frank Green in 1902 and presented to Edwin Gray of Gray's Court. They were possibly erected originally by Miss Ann Clapham, whose crest the lions may represent, during her occupancy of Treasurer's House between approximately 1815 and 1833.