University Tower And Wills Memorial Building And Attached Front Walls And Lamps

University Tower and Wills Memorial Building and attached front walls and lamps, Bristol

University building, 1914–25, by Sir George Oatley, with extensions dating from around 1950 by Ralph Bretnall. Built in limestone ashlar with ashlar cross axial stacks and slate roofs, the building comprises a tower, a three-sided quadrangle to the right, a left-hand block, and a rear hall arranged on a double-depth plan. The architecture follows the Perpendicular Gothic Revival style.

The most striking feature is the very large two-stage square tower with an octagonal belfry. It has massive clasping buttresses with ashlar corners. The central doorway features a splayed Tudor arch with octagonal buttresses, topped by a frieze containing nine carved figures set in niches. Above this are half-glazed traceried two-leaf doors. A large two-centred arched window sits above, featuring three transoms and two king mullions leading to blind traceried panels with paired painted shields. The second stage contains a Tudor arch between the buttresses beneath a panelled wall, with three ogee-headed windows separated by pinnacle buttresses. The octagonal tops of the buttresses are finished with corner pinnacles and swept caps. The belfry itself has tripartite windows to each side, the flanking ones being blind, with panel tracery above.

To the left stands a single-storey screen wall with parapet, comprising four bays with mullion windows and a canted left-of-centre bay containing a Tudor-arched door. Behind this screen is a two-storey symmetrical block with a tall canted bay and a Tudor-arched window above, set back between wide ashlar buttresses.

The quadrangle's rear three-storey, seven-bay range features buttresses between full-height Tudor-arched four-light windows. A central three-window canted bay has three-light windows with Tudor-arched heads and ogee-headed upper ones. To the right sits a squat square three-bay tower with octagonal clasping turrets, adjoining a forward-projecting five-bay wing with similar fenestration to the rear quadrangle. Its gabled end elevation displays large clasping octagonal turrets and a central full-height canted bay. To the right, set back, is a mid-twentieth-century extension executed in a similar style.

The Great Hall to the rear comprises six bays separated by flying buttresses, with aisles featuring shallow segmental-arched five-light mullion windows between the buttresses and a parapet. Projecting to the rear of the east courtyard is the Council Room, a polygonal structure with nine bays divided by buttresses and three-light windows with panel tracery, the inner windows being blind.

The plinth and windows throughout display Perpendicular panel tracery. Cornices are decorated with grotesques, and stepped crenellated parapets crown the walls.

Interior

The interior maintains a fine and consistent late Gothic style with good blind-tracery stone panelling, joinery, and plasterwork. The very large three-bay entrance hall has panelled tracery walls and fan vaulting. The belfry houses Britain's fourth-largest bell, called "Great George".

Long stairs flank the hall, rising to three two-centre arches beneath an enriched wall divided into three by buttresses. A seven-bay cross passage features fan vaulting and Tudor-arched doors leading to the Great Hall.

The Great Hall itself contains six bays with large trilobate stone arches at each end and a five-bay north apse containing the organ. A south balcony is supported on timber fan vaults. Linenfold panelling runs throughout, and a hammer beam roof rests on large corbels, with tracery panels over the bracing and large openwork pendents.

The left-hand block contains the Reception Room, which comprises three fully-panelled bays with elliptical arches at each end, two Tudor-arched fireplaces, and a panelled plaster ceiling with pendents.

The Council Room features attached piers supporting a vaulted roof with intersecting ribs, forming a fourteen-sided ceiling light with tracery glazing bars. Its inner wall contains a wide segmental arch spanning five blind windows with tracery panels and shields. Linenfold panelling lines the walls.

Subsidiary features

Attached dwarf walls extend approximately twenty metres to the west and forty metres to the east of the tower, adorned with four tall cast-iron lamps.

Historical context

The university began as the College of Science and Literature in 1876 and received its charter in 1909. The tower has been compared to the boldest Gothic displays of Yale, and has been described as "a masterpiece, monumental in scale and the dominating landmark of the city." The Great Hall was gutted during the Second World War and subsequently rebuilt.