Archbishop's House and Cathedral House

Archbishop's House and Cathedral House

Archbishop's House and Cathedral House were designed in 1886–87 by architect Frederick A Walters as a bishop's house and clergy house in Gothic style. The buildings incorporate parts of an earlier 1840s clergy house and schools by Augustus Welby Pugin. Some refurbishment was carried out in the 1930s and 1950s.

The buildings are constructed of stock brick laid in English bond, with plinths and some diaper decoration in black brick, and stone dressings. They feature ornamental iron rainwater goods and slate roofs, which are mainly concealed by parapets. A series of tall channelled and moulded brick chimneystacks rise above the roofline.

The archbishop's residence, now known as Archbishop's House, stretches mainly along St George's Road, while the clergy house, now Cathedral House, runs mainly along Westminster Bridge Road. In the archbishop's house, the public rooms are located on the ground floor, with the archbishop's private rooms and some offices on the first floor. The third floor was originally occupied by nuns, and service rooms were provided in the basement. Cathedral House has a complicated plan incorporating four staircases. It comprised service rooms in the basement and ground floor, accommodation for clergy on the first and second floors including two communal reception rooms, and originally seminary accommodation on the third floor.

The principal front of Archbishop's House faces south-west along St George's Road. It comprises a south-west block of four storeys and basement and two bays, divided from a lower three-storey and basement seven-bay north-west block by a taller set-back tower behind the main entrance. The south-west block has a crenellated parapet and bands between floors. The third floor windows are triple mullioned casement windows. The other floors have triple mullioned and transomed casement windows with relieving arches above the ground and second floor windows, but the first floor windows additionally have three blank stone panels with cinquefoil carved heads. The south-east return has a tall two-storey canted bay window, an external channelled chimneystack and projecting gable.

Adjoining the south-west block is the main entrance with gable flanked by buttresses and an arched doorcase with the archbishop's arms and the date 1886 above. This is flanked by small arched windows with leaded lights. The double door has ornamental iron hinges. The recessed tower behind the main entrance is of five storeys and one bay, with a crenellated parapet, arched windows to the two upper floors and narrow mullioned and transomed windows below.

The north-west block is of seven bays with a crenellated parapet and two external channelled chimneystacks. Second-floor windows are two-light mullioned windows with drip moulds. First-floor windows and the two northern ground floor windows are mullioned and transomed with relieving arches, and the five southern windows on the ground floor have more elaborate mullioned and transomed casements and are divided by buttresses. Archbishop's House terminates in a corner full-height canted bay of three windows, with arched heads to the second floor windows, blank stone cinquefoil-headed panels above the first floor windows, and relieving arches above the ground-floor windows.

The principal front of Cathedral House faces north along Westminster Bridge Road and is of three to four storeys with a crenellated parapet, two small gables and a projecting plinth. The irregularly spaced windows are either stone mullioned or mullioned and transomed casements. There are three doorcases. The eastern one is an elaborate stone doorcase incorporating an arch with blank shields to the spandrels and a fanlight with three trefoiled arches. The central and western ones are plainer arched doorcases with dripmoulds. A further section, attached to St George's Cathedral, faces south-west and is of two storeys with stone paired trefoil-headed lights. It is terminated by a narrow octagonal brick tower with winder staircase on the cathedral side. A gabled section further north-west has taller ground floor mullioned and transomed windows with moulded stone corbel heads.

The internal triangular courtyard has a variety of stone mullioned windows including some with gabled heads, some with ogee trefoiled heads and some mullioned and transomed windows with ogee trefoiled heads. The tiled floor has alternate red and black tiles.

An entrance from St George's Road into Archbishop's House leads into a vestibule with an arched ribbed ceiling and two built-in stone settles. This opens onto the main staircase, a stone well staircase incorporating a series of stone arches. In 1935 a lift with ornamental iron grilles was inserted into the well. On the ground floor a passage to the south-west with original doors has a number of small rooms, originally waiting rooms and a large reception room at the south western end, now used as a library, and retaining original cornices and doorcases.

Opening off to the north-west of the main staircase is the largest reception room, the dining hall. This is of five bays with a panelled ceiling with moulded tie beams supported on corbels, original arched doorcases and an elaborate carved stone fireplace with end pilasters, five small ogee arches with cinquefoil decorations, and the motto DEUS PROVIDEBIT. The adjoining room to the north-west, designed to be part of a library and now storing archives, has a late 19th century carved wooden staircase and gallery incorporating book stands. The adjoining north-west corner room, shown as a library on the architect's plans, has an original stone fireplace with attached colonnettes and patterned tiles.

The first floor has a built-in window seat by the staircase and archiepiscopal apartments which include a chapel with stained glass in one window depicting St Thomas More and St John Fisher, inserted in 1935 to commemorate their canonisation. A number of rooms retain their original ceilings and one window has stained glass with armorial shields. The top floor formerly housed a convent. The basement, which housed the service rooms, retains original room divisions and red and white floor tiles, but the kitchen was refitted in the 1950s.

Cathedral House has an oak main staircase from ground to first floor with a rectangular well, chamfered balusters and moulded posts under a large rectangular glazed lantern. Access to the upper floors is by a smaller well staircase in the north-west corner, of similar character to the main staircase except that alternate balusters have been truncated and linked with a T-bar to adjoining balusters. There is also a narrow stone newel staircase in the north-east corner, a stone staircase in the centre of the north side, which has plain iron balusters and scrolled ends to the handrail to the basement flight, and a blocked narrow newel stair to the octagonal tower facing south-west.

The semi-basement towards the north end on the St George's Road side has a wide Baronial-style stone chimneypiece to a former kitchen, with circular motifs at the sides, one enclosing a bishop's mitre, the other the shield of St George. The adjoining room, formerly a coal cellar, retains two elliptical-headed arches, and the corner room between St George's Road and Westminster Bridge Road has a tiled larder with marble shelves and steel hanging racks.

The ground floor of the north-east side has a tiled corridor and simple door surrounds, some retaining simple six-panelled doors probably by Pugin. The more commodious first floor accommodation is in the north-west corner with moulded cornices, late 19th century wooden fireplaces, one retaining decorative tiles and a metal firegrate, and a corridor with panelled doors with battlemented surrounds. The first and second floors each have a communal room with moulded cornices and tie beams. The clergy dining room retains the original fireplace and the window onto the internal courtyard has re-constituted fragments of 19th century stained glass which were rescued from St George's Cathedral following wartime bomb damage. The upper floor bedrooms also retain their fireplaces which are smaller and simpler.