College House And Westbury College

BRISTOL

ST5777

901-1/26/2056

COLLEGE ROAD, Westbury On Trym

(North side)

08/01/59

Westbury College and College House

(Formerly Listed as: COLLEGE ROAD, Westbury On Trym, Westbury College)

I

College, now house. 1459-69. For John Carpenter, Bishop of Worcester and Westbury. Dismantled 1643, house built from ruins 1709. Red sandstone rubble, limestone ashlar dressings and concrete tile hipped roof. Square, single-depth plan gate tower, and attached screen wall forming the south side of the house. Four-stage ashlar gate tower has second-stage string, a drip below a crenellated parapet, and corner gargoyles; square ground-floor recess contains a two-centred arched carriage entrance with C20 infill; paired first- and second-stage Tudor-arched windows with label moulds, and C20 sash window in a square recess to the third floor. In the rear elevation are infilled one-, two- and three-light Tudor-arched windows, some with label moulds. Rubble screen wall to the left incorporates fragments of arches, and has two small inserted chamfered first-floor windows, and a pointed-arched doorway to the left with hollow chamfered reveals; on the left-hand corner is a projecting round stair turret with slit windows and a conical ashlar roof which curves up to a finial. Behind the screen wall is the C18 two-storey house with C20 sash windows.

INTERIOR: the gate tower has two sexpartite vaulted bays with bosses to the entrance passage at the base, and a winder stair to the roof. Few original details survive in the completely modernised house.

HISTORICAL NOTE: the college housed the Canons from Westbury Collegiate church, and was planned on the quadrangular system adopted in contemporary Oxford; it had originally four corner turrets, of which one other survives to Trym Road (qv). William Canynges, who paid for much of the C15 work on St Mary Redcliffe (qv) was Dean at the College after he became ordained, and may have contributed to its rebuilding. The College forms an important group with the collegiate Church of the Holy Trinity, Church Road (qv).

This entry was subject to a Minor Amendment on 11 May 2018.