Queen Elizabeth House

SO8555SW 620-1/13/651

WORCESTER, TRINITY STREET (East side), Queen Elizabeth House

22/05/54

II*

House, now offices. Early/mid C16 with later additions and alterations. Comprehensive external repairs including re-roofing 1995. Timber-framed with painted rendered infill panels, some wattle and daub. Plain clay tile roof with paired projecting gables over gallery. Lead-lined timber gutters. Rectangular plan of 2 bays. Part of southern ground-floor bay was a through walkway. External jettied gallery to first-floor of west elevation. 2 storeys. 2 first-floor windows. Timber-framing mainly square panels, four high to wall-plate; close-studding to left ground-floor of west elevation; tension braces; infilled square panels form gallery balustrade on moulded bressumer; collar and queen-posts to left main gable, similar plus V-struts to gallery gables; double purlin roof, one set clasped by strutted collar. First-floor windows are 4-light with diamond-leaded casements; boarded door to left and right of elevation accessing gallery. 2-light leaded window to left ground-floor, boarded door to centre, open walkway to right. Left-return has paired 4-light diamond leaded windows to each floor. INTERIOR: exposed framing to ground-floor including ceilings, plain chamfers to bridging beams; modern staircase to gallery; 2 rooms to first-floor, open to underside of roof, framing to walls and ceilings exposed, boarded doors. HISTORICAL NOTE: Queen Elizabeth House was jacked up and moved to the present location in 1891. Its original site was approx. 10 metres to the north, the walkway straddling the eastern part of The Trinity. The reputed visit by Queen Elizabeth I in 1575 is not corroborated, a more likely connection is thought to be via an endowment to the Trinity hospital, school and almshouses. It has been suggested that this was the schoolmaster's house.

(Buildings of England: Pevsner Nikolaus and Brooks Alan: Worcestershire: Harmondsworth: 2007: 747; Transactions of the Worcestershire Archaeological Society: Carver M O H (Editor): Medieval Worcester - An Archaeological Framework: Worcester:1980-: P277-278; Nicholas Molyneux, Pat Hughes, Stephen Price: Vernacular Architecture Group Spring Conference Worcestershire: 1995-: 2.13; Tim Bridges and Charles Mundy:Worcester - A Pictorial History: West Sussex: 1996: 73 & 74).