Cathedral School

Cathedral School, Bristol

This building formed part of St Augustine's Abbey, founded in 1140. It contains the former refectory and incorporates a 13th-century right-hand archway, with upper walls dating from the early 16th century. The structure was extensively altered and partly refaced in the late 18th and early 19th centuries.

The building is constructed from 12th-century red Pennant rubble with limestone dressings, and squared coursed rubble above. The rear is rendered with limestone dressings. It has rubble ridge stacks and a slate roof. The plan is single-depth, formerly positioned to the south side of the cloister, with a south-west vaulted through passage. A Norman-style gateway features Perpendicular Gothic style fenestration.

The former frater forms the left-hand half of the school building and originally had a courtyard to its right, with a lesser cloister behind.

The north elevation rises three storeys with a basement, arranged in a four-window range. The right-hand rubble section displays a late 12th-century two-centred arch of three orders with stiff leaf capitals to hollow-moulded arches, an inner arch of cusped trefoil, and a doorway with shouldered lintel and strap hinges. A weathered corbel relating to the former cloisters appears to the right, and a blocked entrance with straight joints to the left. Early 16th-century windows are set in flat-headed hollow-moulded frames with mullions to ogee heads featuring cinquefoils and small panel tracery in the upper lights on the second floor.

The main section to the left is refaced in early 19th-century ashlar on the lower two floors, symmetrically arranged with drips to the ground and first floors. Sixteenth-century second-floor windows, a cornice and parapet are retained. A central Tudor-arched doorway with splayed reveals and ridge door is flanked by two ovolo-moulded three-light mullion windows with octagonal leaded casements on each side. Three paired first- and second-floor windows are separated on the first floor by 18th-century buttresses supported on corbels, with a four-light window above the arch.

The rear elevation divides into three sections. The left-hand rubble block, one window wide, has a restored basement doorway with moulded arch and two small lancets to the right. The tall first-floor window contains four lights with two lower transoms and a drip mould halfway up, with a smaller four-light window above. The middle section is rendered, three storeys high with seven windows, drip moulds to each floor and a roll-top coping. Four three-light first-floor windows have elliptical-arched heads, the right-hand pair featuring leaded lights as on the front. The upper floor has single windows to the left, the remainder paired, with those on the third floor separated by buttresses. The right-hand section is a two-storey rubble range with one window. It contains a tall elliptical-arched lower cross window with cinquefoil-headed lights and an upper three-light window with sunken spandrels. A jamb from a 16th-century fireplace appears at ground-floor level on the left-hand return.

The interior was extensively remodelled in the 19th century. A vaulted passage at the rear to the right contains two Tudor-arches, the western arch featuring a moulded surround and an ashlar relieving arch with a heraldic shield. The room above the 12th-century arch was originally an open hall, now fitted with a 20th-century mezzanine. A passage runs along the front of the building, with a 19th-century open-well stair from the entrance hall featuring cast-iron stick balusters and column newel. The Headmaster's room contains an Adam-style fire surround with fluted mantle, a cast-iron hob grate with pointed-arched moulding, and a semicircular-arched niche cupboard to the left.