The Old Grammar School (St John's Hospital Chapel)

This building began as a hospital chapel in the 1340s and was used as a school from 1558 until 1885. An early 20th-century extension was added later. It is constructed from red sandstone ashlar with tiled roofs.

The building stands on the corner of Bishop Street and Hales Street and is orientated roughly east-west, with a later wing to the north. The former chapel, consisting of a continuous nave and chancel, occupies the length of the main range. There is an adjacent room to the north, formed from the blocked aisle and used as a school room. The north-west tower now contains a stair, providing access to the first floor of the adjacent early 20th-century, two-storey parish rooms, which stand in a wing adjoining the north side of the tower.

Exterior

The south elevation of the building is four uneven bays separated by buttresses. The two eastern bays are narrow and light the chancel; each has a pointed arched window opening with three trefoil lights and cusped tracery. The architraves are chamfered and moulded, and there are sloping sills, installed when the lower quarters of the windows were blocked when the chapel was converted for use as a school in the mid-16th century. The two western bays are wider and bear evidence in the masonry of two blocked pointed-arched openings between the nave arcade and the south aisle, which was demolished in the 16th century. There is a wide chimneystack built in front of the right-hand arch, dating from 1852. In the left-hand arch a doorway was inserted in the mid-20th century; it has a deep concrete lintel faced in sandstone.

The two bays of the north elevation of the chancel largely correspond to their southern counterparts. Behind the buttress separating these bays there is a blocked doorway. The former north aisle takes the form of a lean-to structure built upon the northern façade of the main range. In the east end it has a three-light window with cusped tracery, and on the north wall is an inserted window, its depressed-arched head characteristic of the later 15th century, with three trefoil lights.

The east elevation, also the liturgical east end, is a gable framed by diagonal buttresses and has a five-light window with flamboyant tracery; the sill of this window was returned to its original level in the early 20th century. There is a small oblong opening near the apex, providing ventilation to the loft space. The west gable, rebuilt at the end of the 18th century and again in 1852, has a five-light window with cusped tracery and a hood mould. There is a narrow trefoil lancet at the apex.

To the left (north) of the west gable end is the tower: it has a pointed-arched doorway beneath a hood mould, a small niche part-way up, and a small lancet vent at the apex. Its roof is pitched and surmounted by a bell turret. There is a courtyard on the northern side of the chapel.

The sandstone across the façades of the medieval building is heavily weathered, and there are various replacement blocks replicating the original form.

The early 20th-century extension stands at an angle adjacent to the north tower, turning the corner to Silver Street. It is two bays and two storeys, each with a tripartite window with pointed trefoil lancets within a chamfered surround. Those on the ground floor and in the right-hand bay of the first floor have flat arches. The left-hand first-floor bay rises into a gabled dormer and has a four-centred arch window opening. Windows have diamond leaded glazing. There is a projecting storey course, and the ground-floor windows have hood moulds.

Interior

The nave and chancel of the main chapel are a continuous space beneath a lofty barrel-vaulted ceiling, replaced in the 1960s and recently restored. The scissor-braced trusses to the pitched roof are understood to survive in the loft. The walls are bare to the sandstone ashlar. Variations in the masonry show that the bottom quarters of the windows have been blocked in the chancel; that to the east end was returned to its original level in the early 20th century. The chancel windows are Decorated Gothic, original to the building.

The 14th-century choir stalls taken from Whitefriars Friary line three sides of the chancel and part of the north wall of the nave. There are four incomplete ranges, cut to fit the chancel, comprising forty-six seats separated by arm rests, with corresponding benches with panelled and traceried fronts and poppyhead ends. Void mortises suggest the seat backs were originally mounted with a screen. There is a reading desk formed at the centre of the east range, with a traceried panel with a wide ogee arch and tracery spandrels. The seat backs bear centuries of the pupils' incised graffiti, and one two-metre section of the benches is carved with deep channels and pits for marbles.

On either side of the nave there are two blocked arches into the former aisles. The arches are pointed and chamfered; the capitals to the supporting piers have been cut back flush with the walls. On the south side a fireplace was built into the eastern blocked arch in 1852. It has a moulded stone chimneypiece, and above, within the arch, is a bricked-up panel with a timber lintel. In the western blocked archway, a doorway was added in the 1960s; it has a deep concrete lintel faced in sandstone.

On the north wall, there is a pointed-arched doorway through the western blocked arch into the tower, understood to have been created in the 16th century when the chapel was converted to a school. A narrow lancet doorway leads from roughly the middle of the wall into the former north aisle. A second narrow doorway, which has been blocked and is concealed by the raised choir stalls, leads diagonally from the chancel to exit behind a buttress on the north elevation. The west window dates from the 1852 remodelling of the gable end. It has five pointed trefoil lights and flowing tracery.

The room within the former north aisle has painted stone walls. The east end has a three-light window with geometric tracery, probably 15th century, which, like the chancel windows, is blocked at the bottom. Towards the base of the wall there are fragments of masonry suggesting a blocked opening. The north wall has a Tudor-arched window with three trefoil lights, characteristic of the later 15th or 16th century. The roof has had a later ceiling inserted, which interrupts the apex of the east window, and has two cross-beams with joists between. Beneath the doorway into the main chapel is a pit, covered by glass, which shows the original floor level of the room, and a stone piscina in the wall. On the south wall a brick chimneystack was inserted in 1852. The fireplace has been blocked and infilled with modern brick. The west end of the room is enclosed by a glazed timber screen within a pointed arch opening, which fits stylistically with the mid-19th-century phase of development.

On the ground floor of the tower is the main entrance, concealed behind another Victorian half-glazed timber screen. A staircase rises to provide access to the first floor of the 20th-century extension. It is a robust construction with moulded handrail, moulded and chamfered balusters, and newels capped with a tapered finial. At the top of the stair part of the infilling masonry to the blocked arcade archway has been removed, revealing the chamfered opening lined with finely-moulded stone. This area has a sloping ceiling supported by timber cross-beams and a purlin with windbraces beneath.

The early 20th-century extension is a single cell on each floor and has been dry-lined, leaving only the stone window surrounds exposed. The roof is supported on timber trusses with a braced collar and steel tension rods.