No 9 And Attached Wall To Left At Rear

No. 9 College Green, Worcester

This is a house and attached wall of complex multi-phase construction. The main building dates from the late 16th or early 17th century, with significant rebuilding in the mid-18th century and further additions and alterations, including restorations undertaken between 1970 and 1990. It is built on a timber frame with brick facades of pinkish-red brick laid in Flemish bond. The roof is plain tile, double pitch, with two left end brick stacks, a side stack to the front at right, and a rear stack; all have oversailing courses and pots. The building is accompanied by an attached pinkish-brown brick wall with purple brick copings.

The building follows an unusual plan comprising three parallel ranges: a kitchen to the south, a central service room, and the largest range to the north. Extensions were added along the west elevation during the 18th and early 19th centuries, including a former stair tower to the west of the north wing. The north elevation was refronted in brick in the late 18th century.

The exterior presents three storeys with an attic in the gable at the rear. There are three first-floor windows. Exposed timber framing is visible at the south-east. The front facade has a plinth. Throughout the building, 6/6 sash windows are set in near flush frames with flat arches of gauged brick. The first and second floors have 3-course bands, and the eaves have a moulded band. The entrance is positioned at the right, featuring a 4-panel raised and fielded door with a fluted frieze, divided overlight with margin lights, and a porch with slender octagonal pilasters, frieze and cornice.

The rear elevation includes a canted bay on the first floor with 10/10 sashes between 6/6 sashes, two 6/6 sashes on the second floor, and a 6/6 fixed light in the attic.

The interior contains cyma and ovolo moulded beams on the ground and first floors, with early sawn floorboards and some late 16th and 17th-century doors. The kitchen features a large open fireplace with a chamfered bressumer. The central service room contains a remarkably rare and fine example of a service screen with an upper row of cupboards, a mullioned door, panelled doors with decorative piercing, a cupboard door to the left of a ribbed plank cellar door, and a transverse beam marking the former position of the service passage from the kitchen to the west range.

A fine late 17th-century staircase has pulvinated and turned balusters, relating to contemporary cross windows in the stair turret but not to the former newel stair, which rises within the body of the 16th and early 17th-century house to the attic. The hall, clearly resulting from late 18th-century reworking, retains late 17th-century bolection moulded panels to the dado.

The subsidiary wall feature is L-plan, curved at the angle with brick buttresses, approximately 2 metres high and 30 metres long.

Historically, the building was known in the 17th century as The Organist's House. From 1784, it was occupied by Widow Cowe, followed by Mary Isaac, Revd Charles Yardley, Miss Susan Shapland (from circa 1821), Mary Shapland from 1850, and in 1881 by DW Sampson, the second master of King's School. The whole of the south side of College Green formed service buildings to the medieval monastery. This is a complex multi-phase house forming part of the significant group of listed buildings in College Green, which creates the setting for Worcester Cathedral to the north.